Wolf Fork Valley

In 1937, the Southern-born, New York-educated Lamar Dodd became the chair of the art department at the University of Georgia at the age of twenty-seven. Primarily a landscape painter, Dodd desired to “captured the mood of the place.” In Wolf Fork Valley, Dodd depicts the region northwest of Clayton, Georgia. Incorporating a diverse palette of green hues from sage to chartreuse in Wolf Fork Valley, Dodd alludes to the pessimism of the decade and the propensity for American Scene artists to paint agrarian scenes. While a few farmhouses and herd of cows indicate a human presence, the landscape is devoid of figures imbuing the painting with an eerie ambience.