Acrylic Cods

Item Description

Title & Artist:  "Swimming Upstream" – by Susan Dodge

Medium & Size:  Acrylic on wood.  21 7/8" L x 8 5/8" H x 3/4" D.  For indoor display only.

Artist Statement:  My recent themes for my paintings focus on the sea and the land, the lines where they meet, and the beings that live beneath the oceans and the rivers. Our connection as humans to nature is the natural world around us, below the ocean and above the earth—who we are, where we live, and everything in nature.

Our roots keep us grounded to the earth while we strive to reach the heavens within and above. This desire, illustrated by the baby reaching up to our mother, repeats throughout our lives and runs very deep within us. Likewise, deep below the sea and the earth, there are mystery and longing to return to our source.

I paint swimmers—human and fish—and am memorized by the vastness of the water and what lives and stirs deep within the earth, under the sea, and in the rivers that flow from the mountaintops back to the source to meet the sea.

Artist Biography:  Susan Dodge is a painter and ceramic artist born and raised in Marblehead, where her family has lived for generations. Educated at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, she has been working as an artist for her entire life.

Currently, Dodge is the Director of ArcWorks Community Art Center in downtown Peabody, MA. As a program of Northeast Arc, ArcWorks is an inclusive art center where Dodge teaches art classes to the people served by Northeast Arc and to members of the surrounding communities of the North Shore, and where she curates two gallery spaces and a gallery retail store.

Dodge's resume reflects a life-long desire to give back by teaching art; a commission for 48 paintings at the famed The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, FL; a seven-year stint as Project Manager at a web design firm; a business career in sales and marketing at the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, MA; curating many art exhibitions throughout her career; and owning her own pottery studio, The Artful Dodger, through which she sold murals, tiles, and signature pottery throughout the U.S. and the Virgin Islands.

Hosting Business:  "Swimming Upstream" is on display at Sweetwater Trading Co., 33 Atlantic Ave., Marblehead, MA.

Item Special Note

Pick-up of purchased cods will be on Wednesday evening, July 5. Winning bidder will receive a notification email with information on pick-up time and location.

If winning bidder requires shipping, winner's credit card will be charged a separate $24.95 fee to cover USPS ground and handling. Shipping is available within the U.S. only and must be requested within 7 days after receipt of the notification email.

Any cod purchased via "Buy Now" will remain on display at the hosting business through the end of the auction, and will be available for pick-up as detailed in the winning bidder notification email.

If winning bidder has not picked up cod (or provided shipping address) within 30 days after the close of the auction, cod will become the property of Marblehead Festival of Arts, Inc.

Click here to see the other decorated cods up for bid in our Cods of a Different Color online auction!

To learn more about the Marblehead Festival of Arts, visit www.marbleheadfestival.org.
To make a tax-deductible donation, visit www.marbleheadfestival.org/donations.