Now through April 29, 2022

The Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie in Cadwalader Park is now presenting an exhibition of paintings by New Jersey native and revered American landscape painter Lois Dodd and artists who have long been a part of her life. Dodd, 94, a co-founder of the legendary artist-run Tanager Gallery, has, for more than 70 years, painted her surroundings including New York’s Lower East Side, rural Mid-Coast Maine, and the Delaware Water Gap. Among her favorite subjects — and the central theme of the exhibition -— is the night sky.

Together with painting colleagues and former students Jeff Epstein, Dan Finaldi, and Elizabeth O’Reilly, Lois Dodd has ventured out on summer nights to paint. In addition to the nocturnes, “Painting the Moon and Beyond looks through windows and doors and at portraits the artists have made of each other, including one by painter Mel Leipzig of Trenton. It was Leipzig who introduced Epstein to Dodd, and Dodd who introduced Finaldi to Leipzig.

The exhibit is curated by Ilene Dube. 

A pioneering woman artist, Dodd has been the subject of more than 50 solo exhibitions since 1954, a time when female artists didn’t receive the opportunity and recognition of their male counterparts. Her work is in the collections of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the Colby College Museum of Art, the Farnsworth Art Museum, and the Portland Art Museum, among others. “Painting the Moon and Beyond” comes on the 25-year anniversary of a retrospective of Dodd’s work at the Trenton City Museum.

“Painting the Moon and Beyond: Lois Dodd and Friends Explore the Night Sky” is accompanied by a short film and a catalog. Stay tuned for more information on programs to take place over the course of the exhibition. 

For more information, visit ellarslie.org or call 609.989.1191.