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Art Review: Dozier Bell

Art Review: Dozier Bell
Oculus, 5, Dozier Bell, 46 x 44 inches, acrylic on linen, 2001.

Dozier Bell was a philosophy major at Smith College when she discovered that visual art could represent her deep philosophical notions in a vital and expansive way. Luckily for us, she switched her major to studio art to pursue her scholarly inquiries. Bell is the seventh generation of her family to reside in Maine, and she lives and works in Waldoboro.

In Oculus, 5, Bell conjures up a myriad of familiarities: an eye, a lens, a scope with crosshairs, the moon and the earth; she creates a perspective of viewing the image through a surveillance eyepiece. The observed planet-like place toggles between being recognizable and being unfamiliar. This ambiguity leaves us ungrounded and helps direct our thoughts to the idea of the unknown and the infinite.

Bell is an artist in deep spiritual engagement with the human psyche and the environment. Her work often has both haunting and dreamy qualities, and that duality of malevolence and benevolence invites us into a deeper realm of understanding. As Bell explains, “Painting is a way to research intuitions and ideas that feel urgent to me, because visual images have the capacity to bypass one’s reasoning and to reach that part of the mind that seems to know more than it has the capacity to express.”

Dozier Bell is represented by Sarah Bouchard Gallery in Woolwich, Maine, and with Carol Corey Fine Art in Kent, Connecticut. Bell received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. She has received a Fulbright Fellowship, two Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants, a grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, and a Purchase Prize award from American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York. She may be contacted through her website.

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