TANYA MURPHY DODD: SHADOWS OF A JOURNEY
“Tanya Murphy Dodd represents a medium of exchange between the past and the present. Her memory informs what she produces through the manipulation of evocative scenes of southern sunrises, and mysterious beginnings of evening. She offers a canvas upon which the mind can wonder and wonder, superimposing a sense of self upon ‘almost familiar’ settings. Spending many of her summers with grandparents in rural settings of South Carolina, Dodd has retained a primal language of the land from whence she developed in her youth, and transported the same into a vocabulary that speaks softly, while stating emotional and familial issues in a most dynamic fashion. Her silhouetted forms are suggestive of conversations and gatherings among spirited-like forms that hold their own as the surrounding backgrounds undulate in and out of clarity. Much like memory, Dodd explores possibilities of circumstances laced with tangible references of home. Her personal journey has taken her down many roads, and she has ventured well into modes of expressions that have expanded her photographic vision into well-stated commentaries on her roots. As the titles of her works most often imply, ‘Daughters of the Land’, Sunday Strollers and Courting Time, there is a consistency of tradition in southern ways that implores one to make their own connections to similar experiences. Most significant in the works of Tanya Murphy Dodd is the presence of the relationship of the people with the environment. Both are ever-changing, forming new ways of appreciating how life progresses as well”.Richard J. Watson,
Curator of Exhibitions,
African American Museum, Philadelphia PA
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