Birds, Botanicals and Nature

The Singer Family & Donna Dodson: Birds, Botanicals and Nature

If you’ve ever looked at drawings or paintings of birds, chances are you’ve seen the work of Arthur B. Singer. America’s most famous bird illustrator was a New York City native born, coincidentally, on Audubon Avenue. A graduate of Cooper Union, Arthur is best known for his bird guides: Birds of The World; Birds of North America and Birds of Europe. A portfolio of his paintings published in the mid-1950s in American Home magazine sold millions of copies. He was awarded the Audubon Society’s first Hal Borland award.

Arthur’s son, Alan Singer, followed in his father’s artistic footsteps and together they designed and illustrated award-winning U.S postal stamps honoring the birds and flowers of all 50 states. He also followed his father’s work with bird guides including: State Birds in 1990. Currently a teacher at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Arthur is an accomplished painter, printmaker and writer on the visual arts. His work has been featured in shows at the Smithsonian, the Norman Rockwell Museum and the Everson Museum in Syracuse.

A third artistic member of the family, Alan’s brother Paul, is an artist living in Brooklyn with his own design firm. His prestigious clients include: the National Park Service, Army Corps of Engineers, Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and the Bronx Zoo. His work for them inspires his own paintings of seascapes and landscapes. The theme is carried further in his enthusiasm for building model boats. This unique exhibit of the Singer family’s works provide a look at nature, from the fine details and vivid colors of birds to the sweeping vistas of land, flowers, water and. Impressionistic abstracts.

Fitting in well with those themes are the figurative wood carvings of Donna Dodson, an artist from Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Inspired by Egyptian, African and Native American art, Dodson crafts works from woods as diverse as osage, orange wood, ash, pine and maple. Female in form, her sculptures are meant to portray the mystical relationship between humans and animals. From the material to the finished figures Dodson’s work evokes an experience of nature that marries the primitive to a higher, nearly transcendent order of design.

Join us for music, wine, hors d’oeuvres and an eventful evening.
Opening reception Saturday, March 26, 6 to 9 pm.

On exhibit until May 7.
Gallery Hours: Fri & Sat 1-4 p.m.
Private showings by appointment.

Co-directors, Bill & Johanne Pesce.
Windsor Whip Works Art Gallery
98 Main Street, PO Box 7, Windsor, New York 13865

Phone: 607-655-2370
Email: Johanne@WhipWorksArtGallery.org
www.WhipWorksArtGallery.org

Update: Channel 34 featured this show on their Up to the Minute News Coverage.

Image: Seagull Cinderella, 15" tall, apple wood and paint
Photo credit: Cliff Pfeiffer