Lois Dodd’s early paintings (1958–66) are showing at Alexandre Gallery through March 18. Dodd, who is eighty-nine, helped to found New York’s artist-run Tanager Gallery in the fifties, when it was one of a series of downtown spaces redefining how work was shown and sold. She said of her paintings in 2012, “They could be much more descriptive, but I don’t want to do that. In that sense, one always puts the blame on the abstract painters. That’s what I looked at and loved. I don’t want to get too descriptive. You can go so far and stop. I can just feel when to stop.”   

Lois Dodd, Cows and Clouds, 1961, oil on linen, 33 1/2″ x 39 1/2″.

Apple Tree, 1964, oil on linen, 55″ x 74″.

Apple Tree, 1966, oil on linen, 42″ x 34″.

Figure in Landscape, 1963, oil on linen, 23″ x 25 1/2″.

Cows in Landscape, 1958, oil on linen, 44″ x 51″.