Drawing and painting is a different way of capturing memories… I put my camera phone down and pick up my pen and brushes!
Maxine Dodd
Hello! I am a professional watercolour and mixed media artist, working from my home studio in south Leicestershire in the UK.
I make drawings and paintings which capture the colour, action and movement of fleeting moments and fast subjects. I am a sports fan and love cycling, rugby, football and cricket. I specialise in pen and ink with watercolour but I also work in pastel, oil and acrylic. My process is spontaneous, making a colourful and expressive response to the scene I see before me.
Inspiration comes from fleeting moments. Capturing movement and colour is a wonderful challenge for me. From people playing sport, making music or working, to life the garden and on the beach
I am a great fan of sketching and work spontaneously using materials which allow discrete observation and quick decision-making. I draw directly onto the paper, with pen and ink and adding quick flashes of colour almost as a shorthand to describe the scene in front of me.
The medium of pen and ink with watercolour is intense and risky, but quick and responsive, suiting my subjects with their twists, turns and bursts of energy.
Solo Exhibitions:
‘Cycling’ Canon Gallery, Oundle, 2022,
‘Racing Lines’ Cank Street Gallery, Leicester,
‘Le Tour’ Alfred East Gallery, Kettering, and jGallery, 2015, ’20 Stages’, jGallery, Moulton, Northampton, 2012.
Open and group shows include,
RI Painters in Watercolours, Mall Galleries, London
Leicester Open 32, New Walk Museum ‘Little selves’, Leicester Society of Artists, ‘Past and Present’,
Leicester Sketch Club, Leicester Museum, along with annual shows for both groups.
Private collections: UK, France, Mallorca, Canada and US
Inspiration
For me, sport has great abstract qualities, showing colour and graceful lines. Teams’ colours have a rhythm as they move – singly or as a group, the flags and banners waved by the crowds of fans, set in the open landscape is perfect for me. It is these elements, along with the energy of the race or match itself, that I try to show in my pictures.
I have long admired many French artists, from Delacroix and Géricault, Lautrec and Degas, through to Matisse, Nicolas de Staël and Dufy. They all have great freedom of expression and draw with beautiful lines.
Another source of inspiration is fashion illustration. Artists such as René Gruau, Andy Warhol and recently, British illustrator David Downton . All these artists use strong line and colour along with the ‘white space’ of the paper, to glorious effect.
Backstory:
Reportage projects with Kettering Symphony Orchestra and Oaklands School in Leicester, alongside sketching cricket matches at the village club, were the first instances where I used these techniques and approaches in a professional capacity for the first time.
Racing Lines Blog
‘Racing Lines‘ began in 2012 as a ‘reportage’ blog with pictures and a brief article. The pun in the title referring not only to the lines of the drawings but also the text. I was looking for a focus for a blog in 2012, telling the story of my favourite bike race, The Tour de France, as it unfolded everyday was perfect.
The image of Peter Sagan at the Prologue was one of the first drawings I made in 2012. In fact, here is the link to the first post. The intention was to draw while the action was taking place – and not stop – just try to record as it happened. It gives risky but exciting results and I work with several pictures simultaneously – generally on the floor with everything spread out.
The subject guided me to the style, along with the drawing medium of pen and ink that really helped form the images.
The theme of ‘Racing Lines’ developed to portray speed and movement, often with sport, especially cycling as the subject, (La Vuelta de España and the Tours of Britain and Yorkshire followed), along with rugby, horse racing, cricket. I love the spontaneity of line and working quickly, the challenge to keep up is another race in itself!
2020 Covid Pandemic
Alongside sport, I sometimes depict subjects that reflect life and times, and during the pandemic, news items from hospitals which moved and inspired me greatly.
Maxine Dodd Art 