Dora Atwater Millikin
http://www.wyndfieldstudio.com/
Dora Atwater Millikin grew up in Little Compton, Rhode Island. She
graduated with the “Senior Art Prize” from the Stoneleigh-Burnham
School,
Greenfield, Massachusetts in 1979. Four years later she graduated from
Newcomb College (Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana) with a BFA
Degree in Painting, Drawing, and Art History. In the Fall of 1998,
she sought a more structured and academic art program and enrolled as a
full time student at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts (Old Lyme,
Connecticut). She graduated in May of 2002 with a BFA degree in
Painting.
Today her subject matter focuses on coastal New
England scenery with emphasis on the gritty, industrial aspects of the
fishing industry and the increasingly more urban nature of local towns.
Dora is an artist member of the Providence Art Club and is currently
painting with groups at the Lyme Art Association in Old Lyme,
Connecticut. She is represented by several galleries in Rhode Island and
Massachusetts. Her work is seen in private collections in Europe and the
United States. At the National Arts Club in NYC, Dora was the recipient
of the Edwin Gould Foundation Award (2002). This award placed her fifth
overall for that year In the Club’s annual student exhibition featuring
art schools in NYC and surrounding towns. Upon graduating from the Lyme
Academy, she received the John Stobart Fellowship Award encouraging the
transition to a professional career in painting. More recently, in 2005
she won top honors at the Annual Non- Member’s Exhibition at the
Salmagundi Club in NYC with the Joseph Hartley Memorial Award for Oil.
Dora continues to participate in local and National
painting competitions
and exhibitions (both solo and group). She serves on the Board of
Directors for The Art League of Rhode Island as their Vice President and
overseer to their Programs committee.
Artist's Statement
My work is about paint. It is about composition and it is about my
struggle with color. I don’t ever want my viewer to believe that my
paintings are recorded statements on what I think I see. Rather, I want
my audience to be aware of how I have interpreted what I see and how I
feel about my subject matter and how it can be transformed through
paint. Being a hands-on person, I find painting to be so complex that I
can rarely think my way through the process of painting. Instead, I need
to feel my way through.
I enjoy rendering potentially unpicturesque motifs and everyday objects
and scenes in my life. I wish to present my world as it looks today
without the nostalgia and sentimentality attached to past times. In
essence, my paintings are created out of my personal experiences in and
observations of life as I know it and through using flat patterns and
contrasting solid planes of color, I am always searching for ways to
deliver the unexpected to my viewer. I have been working on a technique
that makes the viewer question: Which is more important the object or
the environment in which it sits?
Since graduating from the Lyme Academy, (May, 2002), I have emphasized
two areas in particular in my painting. First of all, it has been most
important for me to define myself beyond school-hence the statement
above. Secondly, I understand the importance of continuing my education
and have worked on my drawing and painting skills as applied to the
figure. I continue to study with Lyme Academy alumnae and value their
influence and expertise. I believe, studying the figure informs the
technical aspects in all my work.
~ Dora Atwater Millikin
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