Mark Dixon Dodd, The Pier, St. Petersburg. Watercolor, 14 ½ by 17 ¾ inches.
In 1925, seeking a warmer climate for his daughter’s health, Mark Dixon Dodd moved from New York City to St. Petersburg, Florida. He soon became a prominent member of the city’s art community. Dodd opened the Mark Dixon Dodd School of Art in 1930 at 232 Beach Drive, later moving to 5345 Fourth Street South. In 1933 he finished his mural Seminole War, commissioned by the state of Florida as one of the series of six historical subjects to adorn the Florida building of A Century of Progress International Exposition, in Chicago, which opened in June 1933. In 1936, as his reputation as an artist and teacher grew, he was hired by real estate investors, Arthur Modine and Francis Marion Boone, to design a real estate subdivision Driftwood in the St.Petersburg area know as the Big Bayou. Starting in 1937, Dodd designed and built fifteen homes on Coffee Pot Bayou. In each he placed one of his paintings, usually anchored to the wall above the fireplace. The paintings are still there today. Dodd later became head of the art department at St. Petersburg Junior College. In the summer months, Dodd taught art at a camp in Tuxedo, North Carolina, near Ashville.
A review in the St. Petersburg Times, April 13, 1930, by Eve Alsman Fuller notes, “Mark Dixon Dodd may be truly called a St. Petersburg artist since for the last few years he has had his house and studio in the city, except for those painting pilgrimages which he has taken from time to time to the west and to the Carolina Mountains. He has a delightful studio and school of art in the picturesque Bayboro section, and is also head of the fine arts department of the St. Petersburg Junior College. Mr. Dodd is showing in the member’s group six oil paintings and nine watercolors, none of which have ever been hung in the gallery, and has the distinction of having the largest representation in the exhibition. Among the oils, two pictures in the opinion of this reviewer stand out as the best painting this versatile artists has ever done. One is “Self Portrait”, simple, direct, hurriedly done. One of the hardest subjects an artist undertakes. In it Mark has caught something of himself that we all know, but we don’t believe he knows. It’s a little spark of contrariness tempered by a smile…. Watercolors by Mr. Dodd are mostly scenes caught in every day studio life about the Bayboro waterfront. They are vivid and free and active.
Mark Dixon Dodd. Self Portrait 1929, oil on canvas, 15 and 1/2 by 19 1/2 inches.
Born: January 28,1888, St. Louis, Missouri.
Died: 1952, St. Petersburg.
Education: St. Louis School of Fine Art; Art Students League, NYC; with Kenneth Hayes Miller, Johansen, Romanovsky; Provincetown, Cape Cod School of Art with Charles Hawthorne; St. Louis School of Fine Art.
Membership: Florida Federation of Art, Chairman, Arts Committee; Art Club St. Petersburg, director; American Federation of Arts; Florida Artist Group.
Exhibits: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art; New York City Galleries; Ogunquit, Maine; Soreno Hotel, first exhibit in St. Petersburg, March 1925; Art Club of St. Petersburg, January 1927, landscapes and portraits; Art Club of St. Petersburg, 5th Annual, February 1927, Florida; St. Petersburg High School, Valentine Fete, February 1927, portrait, Florence Tricker; Art Club of St. Petersburg, June 1928, Off For The Roundup (a Texas painting), Portrait of Walter Fuller, ten watercolor scenes about St. Petersburg; Tampa Art Club, prize, 1929; Florida Federation of Art, 2nd Annual Convention and Circuit, 1929, Portrait of Diana Davis, Seminole Indian Girl, The Flowered Coat; Art Club of St. Petersburg, one man show, May 1929, thirteen paintings including, Seminole Indian Girl, The Bargain Counter, St. Petersburg Wharf; Art Club of St. Petersburg, April 13, 1930, Self Protrait; Florida Federation of Art, 3rd Annual, honorable mention, 1930; Florida Federation of Art, Annual Circuit, 1930-1931, 1st prize, The Teamsters; Art Club of St. Petersburg, one man show, (his first in St. Petersburg) 1931, catalog included The Bargain Counter, Conversation Entre Actes, The Clam Diggers, The Art Jury, Sidney and her Doll, Portrait-Robert L. Dickey, Portrait-Dr. Stanard Dow Butler, Portrait-Mrs. Niel Upham”, Portrait of an Old Man, Portrait- Miss Harriet Merrell, Portrait-Miss Coleen Cooper, Portrait- Miss Maude Dew, Portrait-C.C. Carr, LeMorn-A Daughter of the Big League, Sarah, Nude Figure and Landscape, Ha-Mo-Kee-the Seminole, Fishing Village Gossips, group of Florida watercolors; Florida Federation of Art, 4th Annual Exhibit 1931, best picture, The Cypress Swamp, The Art Jury; Florida Federation of Art, Annual Circuit, Tampa Art Institute, Municipal Auditorium, Tampa, January 1931, best picture in exhibit, The Teamster, also Hawaiian Dancer; Art Club of St. Petersburg, April 1933; Historical Mural for Florida State Building at Century of Progress Exhibition, Chicago 1933, Incident in Seminole War; Florida Federation of Art, 6th Annual, 1933, honorable mention, Portrait of Ruth Ford; Huntington Hotel, St. Petersburg, February 1936, completion of murals for Mediterranean room; Florida Federation of Art, 19th Annual Exhibit, Miami Beach, December 7, 1945, prize, The Artist’s Son, Miss Sydney Dodd; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; St. Louis Museum of Fine Art; Brooks Memorial Academy, Memphis, Tennesse; Work, Public Library, Woods Hole, Cape Cod, Massachusetts; Huntington Hotel, St. Petersburg; St. Petersburg Public Library, 9th Avenue; Important Galleries in New York City.
Directory: Listed in St. Petersburg City Directory, 1933, 1951, as an artist in 1933, commercial artist in 1951 with studio at 5345 4th Street South in 1951.
