One winter in 1990, when Lois Dodd was teaching at the Vermont Studio School, she noticed a student painting on a small aluminum panel. Inquiring about it, she was told that it was a “flashing,” a common construction material purchased at any hardware store. Flashings are used in roofing, often fitted beneath shingles to protect from leaks, in particular at the junctures of chimneys, skylights or pipes. Dodd, who had been painting
en plein air
since the mid 1960s, was always seeking ways to facilitate her habit. She immediately added the portable aluminum flashings, usually 5 x 7”, to her narrow range of preferred painting supports: easel-sized Masonite panels cut in various dimensions or (for her larger-sized works) stretched linen with relatively little give. Ever since, for nearly 30 years, Dodd has frequently produced what she herself calls her Flashings. For daytime excursions the prepared plates can be carried in her pocket, attached to a Masonite support, and worked upon rapidly on lap or easel, always in oil, using small brushes. Speaking about the Flashings, Dodd said, “Time is limited; weather and temperature are going to change. You’re impelled to keep moving by circumstance, which is better than guilt in the studio. Outside you are looking, watching. You see wonderful things and things happen. You are an observer of nature and everything else.” More than any other of her works, the Flashings are suited to a temporal unfolding of the artist’s observations, suiting her desire to work quickly.
—Faye Hirsch
