• Silhouetted pine trees against a sky with scattered clouds at dusk or dawn.

Dozier Bell

Waldoboro, Maine

Dozier Bell (b. 1957), a seventh generation Maine native, studied art with Neil Welliver in the University of Pennsylvania M.F.A. program and at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Since her first solo show in 1987, Bell has appeared in over thirty solo and two-person exhibits in New York City and across the country. She is the recipient of several awards, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship as artist-in-residence at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany, two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, and the Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant.

Bell’s residencies include the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. She received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the Maine College of Art in 1997. Her work is included in multiple museum and corporate collections.

Selected Works     Exhibits     Statement     CV     Press     Inquire

Selected Works

High tide, 15:00 8 x 10 inches Acrylic on panel 2018 [paintings]

High tide, 15:00
8 x 10 inches
Acrylic on panel
2018 [paintings]

Equinox moon 23 x 34 inches Acrylic on linen 2022 [paintings]

Equinox moon
23 x 34 inches
Acrylic on linen
2022 [paintings]

Manana, twilight 32 x 56 inches Acrylic on linen 2023 [paintings]

Manana, twilight
32 x 56 inches
Acrylic on linen
2023 [paintings]

Pines near the river 12 x 24 inches Acrylic on panel 2023 [paintings]

Pines near the river
12 x 24 inches
Acrylic on panel
2023 [paintings]

Updraft 48 x 54 inches Acrylic on canvas 2014 [paintings]

Updraft
48 x 54 inches
Acrylic on canvas
2014 [paintings]

Bedroom window, first light 4.5 x 3 inches Charcoal on mylar 2023 [drawings]

Bedroom window, first light
4.5 x 3 inches
Charcoal on mylar
2023 [drawings]

Cloud column 4 x 5.5 inches Charcoal on mylar 2025 [drawings]

Cloud column
4 x 5.5 inches
Charcoal on mylar
2025 [drawings]

Emergent 3.5 x 6.5 inches Charcoal on mylar 2025 [drawings]

Emergent
3.5 x 6.5 inches
Charcoal on mylar
2025 [drawings]

Knoll, 01:00 2.75 x 5.25 inches Charcoal on mylar 2017 [drawings]

Knoll, 01:00
2.75 x 5.25 inches
Charcoal on mylar
2017 [drawings]

Night shore, 2 2.5 x 6 inches Charcoal on mylar 2023 [drawings]

Night shore, 2
2.5 x 6 inches
Charcoal on mylar
2023 [drawings]

Opening, 3 3.25 x 4.4 inches Charcoal on mylar 2017 [drawings]

Opening, 3
3.25 x 4.4 inches
Charcoal on mylar
2017 [drawings]

Monhegan harbor, study 3 x 3.5 inches Watercolor on paper 2023 [paintings]

Monhegan harbor, study
3 x 3.5 inches
Watercolor on paper
2023 [paintings]

exhibits

  • Interior of a modern home with white walls, black-framed artwork, and a large window showing green foliage outside.

    Pop-Up

    Dozier Bell
    August 9 – August 11, 2025 [link:/dozier-bell-pop-up]

  • A bright white room with large windows showing green trees outside, decorated with three framed photographs or paintings on the walls, and wooden flooring.

    Genius Loci

    Dozier Bell
    August 10 – September 15, 2024 [link:/genius-loci]

  • White gallery wall with three landscape photographs and one circular photograph, black door on the right, wooden floor, and a small round object on the floor.

    A Solo Exhibition

    Dozier Bell
    May 21 – June 26, 2022 [link:/dozier-bell-solo-exhibition]

Artist Statement

When I began painting forty-five years ago, I was drawn to the restrained spirituality of northern European painters of the Reformation era — Memling, Holbein, van der Weyden — as it was expressed in the balance of light and dark, the real and the fantastic, and a religiosity that neither amplified nor questioned itself. The world of rural Maine in which I grew up could hardly have been more removed in time and culture, and yet as I began to paint the landscape, the ethos conveyed by those early painters found an echo in the mute sanctity of the natural world.

I value the filtering function of memory. When I work from it (as I usually do), aspects of a scene that were incidental fall away, while some that were deeply sensed but not seen have an opportunity to manifest themselves in the painted image. “Participating consciousness,” said cultural historian Morris Berman, “involves merger, or identification, with one's surroundings, and bespeaks a psychic wholeness that has long since passed from the scene.” Holding the image of a place in memory, allowing it to gather to itself everything in my own consciousness with which it resonates, feels like a form of what Berman describes. It removes the illusion of separateness that is such a prominent feature of contemporary life.

Another concept that has long engaged me is expressed in the German term Heimsuchung, which has no precise equivalent in English. Its original meaning of visitation by God, of God knowing exactly where one is at every moment of one’s life, gradually gave way to its use as a term for the visitation of disasters such as plague, famine and war; and yet the term still encompasses these two extremes: everyday union with the divine, and the devastation and annihilation of the physical self and/or its environment. Between these two poles is implied an omniscient being, such as the God described by the Psalmist of the 139th Psalm: one who discerns our thoughts from afar, in whose book "were written all the days that were formed for us, when none of them as yet existed," and to whom "darkness is as light."

My original impetus to paint remains essentially unchanged — to create, from the images in my own life, an armature for the numinous as I have experienced it.

CV

Born: Lewiston, ME | 1957
Resides: Waldoboro, ME

  • 1986
    M.F.A. University of Pennsylvania

    1985
    Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
    Full scholarship

    1981
    B.A. Smith College
    Magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa

  • 2024
    Genius loci, Sarah Bouchard Gallery, Woolwich, ME

    2022
    Dozier Bell, a solo exhibition, Sarah Bouchard Gallery, Woolwich, ME

    2021
    Dozier Bell: Monhegan Island, Carol Corey Fine Art, Kent, CT

    2019
    Half-light, Danese Corey Gallery, New York, NY

    2018
    Zolla Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL

    2017
    Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME

    2016
    Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, ME

    2014
    Danese Corey Gallery, New York, NY

    2013
    Dozier Bell: Mind’s Eye, Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, ME

    2010
    Dozier Bell: Momenta, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME
    Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, ME

    2009
    DFN Gallery, New York, NY
    La Galeria, Barcelona, Spain

    2007
    Gold/Smith Gallery, Boothbay Harbor, ME
    Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, ME

    2006
    DFN Gallery, New York, NY

    2005
    Chase Gallery, Boston, MA
    Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, ME

    2004
    National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC
    University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, ME
    DFN Gallery, New York, NY

    2003
    The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY
    A.V.C. Gallery, New York, NY

    2002
    Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, ME

    2001
    Chase Gallery, Boston, MA

    2000
    Schmidt-Bingham Gallery, New York, NY
    June Fitzpatrick Gallery, Portland, ME

    1999
    Chase Gallery, Boston, MA

    1998
    Dozier Bell: Primary Themes, Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, CT
    Schmidt-Bingham Gallery, New York, NY

    1995
    The Dissonant Heart (in collaboration with the poet Wesley McNair), Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
    Schmidt-Bingham Gallery, New York, NY

    1994
    Original Place: Recent Work by Dozier Bell and Ken Greenleaf, Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME, and Center Gallery, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA (catalog)

    1992
    Schmidt-Bingham Gallery, New York, NY

    1991
    Bingham-Kurts Gallery, Memphis, TN

    1990
    Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, ID
    Schmidt-Bingham Gallery, New York, NY

    1989
    Marilyn Butler Fine Arts, Scottsdale, AZ

    1988
    Schmidt-Bingham Gallery, New York, NY

    1987
    O'Farrell Gallery, Brunswick, ME

  • 2021
    Here and There, Cove Street Arts, Portland, ME

    2019
    The LIGHT Show, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
    Fear and Wonder: Sublime Landscapes on Paper—Selections from the Museum’s Collection, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

    2018
    Inside the Cube: Looking Back Over 40 Years, University of New England Art Gallery, Portland, ME

    2017
    48th Annual Collectors’ Show and Sale, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR

    2016
    Drawing Conclusions, Danese Corey Gallery, New York, NY

    2015
    Director’s Cut: Selections from the Maine Art Museum Trail, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
    Land and Sea, Danese Corey Gallery, New York, NY

    2014
    Invitational Exhibition of Visual Art, Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY

    2013
    Seescape, George Adams Gallery, New York, NY
    Woods, Lovely, Dark, and Deep, DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY
    Maine Women Pioneers, University of New England, Westbrook, ME

    2011
    Land, Sea, and Sky: Contemporary Art in Maine, Addison Gallery at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA
    Synthetic Supports: Plastic is the New Paper, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

    2010
    Dozier Bell, Karen Schiff, Hadi Tabatabai: Drawings, Danese Gallery, New York, NY
    Sacred and Profane, Portsmouth Museum of Art, Portsmouth, NH

    2009
    Selections from the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Portsmouth Atheneum, Portsmouth, NH
    Portland Museum of Art Biennial, Portland, ME

    2008
    Art from Anxious Times, Art Students League, New York, NY
    Transcendental and Sublime, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT
    Silence, La Galeria, Consell de Cent, Barcelona
    Midnight Full of Stars, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ

    2007
    New Artists, Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ
    Introductions II, Stremmel Gallery, Reno, NV

    2006
    The Figure in American Painting and Drawing, 1985-2005, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME

    2005
    The Environment of Landscape: Works from the Olivia and Ellwood Straub Collection, Bates College, Lewiston, ME

    2004-07
    American Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria

    2004
    Images of Time and Place: Contemporary Views of Landscape, The Lehman Gallery, Bronx, NY

    2003-04
    Facing Reality: The Seavest Collection of Contemporary Realism, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY

    2002
    50th Anniversary Exhibition, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME
    Keenly Observed, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT`

    2001-02
    Re-presenting Representation V, The Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY

    2000
    Photographing Maine: 1850–2000, Maine Coast Artists, Rockport, ME

    1998
    After Dark, Maine Coast Artists, Rockport, ME
    After Nature, Herter Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (catalog)
    Seasons of Change: Maine Women Artists and Nature, in conjunction with the American Women Nature Writers Conference at the Payson Gallery, Westbrook College, Portland, ME

    1997
    Invitational Exhibition, Memphis College of Art, Memphis, TN

    1996-97
    Destiny Manifest: American Landscape Painting in the 90's, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL (catalog)

    1996
    Torn Asunder: Collage in Twentieth-Century Art, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
    Inside/Outside: Recent Photography from the MacDowell Colony, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, and the Art Gallery of the University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH
    Changing Horizons: Landscape on the Eve of the Millennium, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY (catalog)
    Skowhegan at 50: The Maine Legacy, Maine Coast Artists, Rockland, ME, and Baxter Gallery, Portland, ME
    Fractured Fairy Tales: Art in the Age of Categorical Disintegration, Duke University Museum of Art, Durham, NC (catalog)

    1995
    Irrational Landscapes, Binghamton University Art Museum, Binghamton, and New York Academy of Sciences, New York, NY

    1994
    The Collectors' Show, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR
    Ten Years, Ten Artists, Albers Fine Art Gallery, Memphis, TN
    Dialogues: On and Off the Wall, Schmidt-Bingham Gallery, Garth Clark Gallery, and Peter Joseph Gallery, New York, NY
    Landscape not Landscape, Gallery Camino Real, Boca Raton, FL (catalog)
    Contemporary Landscapes, Evans-Gropper-Willis Gallery, San Francisco, CA
    The Collectors' Show, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR
    Landscape as Metaphor: The Transcendental Vision, Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA and Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI
    Gender and Identity, Baxter Gallery, Maine College of Art, Portland, ME

    1992
    Art of Maine: A Bounty of Woods and Water, Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, NJ
    Apocalypse and Resurrection, AmFAR Benefit and Exhibition, Gallery Three Zero, New York, NY
    On the Edge: 40 Years of Maine Painting, Maine Coast Artists, Rockport, ME; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME (catalog)

    1991
    Darkness into Light, Lintas: Worldwide, New York, NY

    1990
    Perspectives: Celebrating Contemporary Art at the Portland Museum, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
    Beyond Black and White: Contemporary Hand-Painted Photographs, The Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME

    1989
    Interstices, Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME
    Vision and Visions: Contemporary Landscape Painting, Tavelli Gallery, Aspen, CO
    New Work, Dean Velentgas Gallery, Portland, ME

    1989
    Contemporary Environment, General Electric Company, Fairfield, CT
    Landscape of the Spirit, The Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT (catalog)

    1988
    40th Anniversary Juried Exhibition, Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME
    The Face of the Land, Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, PA
    Fresh Paint, Baxter Gallery, Maine College of Art, Portland, ME

    1987
    Beyond Observation, Schmidt-Bingham Gallery, New York, NY
    New Artists: The Gloria Wilcher Memorial Exhibition, Currier Gallery, Manchester, NH (catalog)
    Gallery Invitational, Farnsworth Museum of Art, Rockland, ME
    Six Young Maine Painters, Maine Coast Artists, Rockport, ME

  • 2019
    Monhegan Artist’s Residency, Monhegan, ME

    2014
    American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, Purchase Prize

    2009
    Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant

    2003
    Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant

    2000
    Residency, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH

    1997
    Achievement Award and Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree, Maine College of Art, Portland, ME

    1995-96
    Fulbright Fellowship as artist-in-residence at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany

    1995
    Residency, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH

    1993
    Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy

    1993
    Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant

    1990
    Residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY

    1987
    National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Painting

    1985
    Residency and full scholarship at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME

  • Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

    Arthur Andersen & Company, St. Paul, MN

    AT & T, New York, NY

    Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID

    Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Bowdoin, ME

    Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME

    Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO

    Exxon Corporation, Irving, TX

    Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME

    Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA

    Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME

    Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, CT

    Memphis Cancer Center, Memphis, TN

    Metropolitan Life, New York, NY

    Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

    Nomura Securities, New York, NY

    Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME

    ORYX Energy Corporation, Dallas, TX

    Swiss Re, New York, NY

    Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME

    United Talent Agency, Los Angeles, CA

    Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, CT

    Zurich Kemper Investments, Chicago, IL (catalog)

Press

Featured
Dozier Bell | Portland Press Herald
Dozier Bell | Portland Press Herald

Smaller Shows at a Trio of Maine Galleries Help Usher in Autumn | Jorge Arango

Dozier Bell | Portland Press Herald
Dozier Bell | Portland Press Herald

Dozier Bell Exhibit Makes For a Mystical Experience | Jorge Arango

Inquire

To inquire about available works or learn more about Dozier Bell, please get in touch.