Dale Sherman Blodget, painter and dancer
Why painting can be like child raising, the joy of making art, the best size brush, and the life-changing technique for hand-printed paper
Dale Sherman Blodget’s painting demo at the Rockport Art Association (circa 2018) was a four-act, choreographed performance that included collage-ey painting, dance, music, and narration. Her performance produced a somewhat abstract dancer in motion made from paint and physical fragments including tissue paper and netting. A prominent prop was Dale’s credit card, which she used like a palette knife to apply paint to the canvas with elegant, sweeping arm motions, as you might expect from an expressive dancer. To create texture and colorful patterns, she applied hand-printed papers to the wet paint and either left them in place or removed them to reveal a special texture. It was an impressive performance that made painting seem fun and made me want to be a credit card painter.
Dale’s paintings are often large—48” by 36”—and celebrate women, flowers, dance, and her dry humor. You can readily choose portions of her paintings that could stand alone as a nice artwork. Her solo show in Annisquam, MA, this past summer featured her breadth of painting styles: representational, plein air, abstract, collage, and her current style that coherently combines nearly all of these.
Dale has been a painter and a dancer throughout her adult life. She performed with modern dance companies based in Boston, taught dance at her own studio in Gloucester, and studied art at institutions now named University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Ontario College of Art in Toronto. She spent her teen years in the California Bay Area and moved back to New England for college. Since then, she has lived in Boston, Berkeley, Toronto, Gloucester, Vermont, Brooklyn, and Groton, MA, before settling in Essex, MA, for the past eight years. Here’s the conversation we had on a sublime New England fall day, sitting on her deck overlooking a grand, saltwater marsh.
Were you painting back when you lived in Vermont?
I started doing a painting a day. They were mostly small, and representational. I did a lot of plein air work in Vermont. I also played around with current culture. For example, the state of Vermont made it illegal to forbid the use of a clothesline in a yard in Vermont [called the “right to dry” law]. There are actually a lot of places in this country where you can’t put up a clothesline. So, I did a series of paintings of clotheslines and figures hanging clothes and meeting each other near a clothesline—I called it the “on-line” dating series [laughs]. There is a good art community in Manchester, Vermont. The Southern Vermont Arts Center is there.
It sounds like your environment has been a strong influence on your painting subjects.
When I moved to Essex [MA], I made a couple of paintings of the marshes and thought “OK, I can’t do this forever.” A lot of people paint this view.
So you painted marshes for about 10 minutes, and then what came next?
When I went to art school in the late 60s, I was doing abstract work because that’s what we were studying and all my teachers were doing it. I had not painted abstractly since then. After my 10 minutes painting the local marshes [smiles], I signed up for a workshop with Susan Guest-McPhail. She was so encouraging and flattering. That’s when I started getting back into collage work.
Your collages incorporate hand-printed paper. Do you print the paper yourself?
Yes, usually. In her workshop, Susan taught us how to use a Gelli plate to make prints on paper. In college, I did a lot of printmaking and silk-screening, which is big and messy and requires a toxic bath. With the Gelli plate, you put acrylic paint on it and throw stuff such as leaves, chains, string, rubber bands, etc. on it, put a paper on it and rub it, and you’ve got a print!
You can wipe off the plate and do it again. You can modify it, maybe add more paint or a stencil, and put the paper down and make it a little different. I was excited about the flexibility of this technique. The funny thing is, I have this file of all these papers I’ve printed, but then when I’m working on a painting, sometimes I don’t have the right paper.
When you realize you don’t have the right paper, is it because you have an idea in mind, with a specific visual pattern?
Usually, it’s because I don’t have the color of the hand-printed paper that’s going to work. From my years of representational work in oils, where you mix constantly for the hue, value, shade, or tint, I’m not going to be happy using something that’s not right.
When you don’t have the right printed paper for your painting, do you stop painting and print some paper?
I don’t. Instead of creating printed paper, I’ll work directly on the painting: I might put a stencil on, or some paint, which I then spray with water to make it drippy, or take the paint off with alcohol splashed here and there and blotted. There’s a lot more direct manipulation you can do.
Were you always a dancer and an artist? How did those work together?
I found I had to focus on one or the other. They didn’t really work together. I had danced since the age of three. At SMTI [now University of Massachusetts Dartmouth] I didn’t dance. But then I went to Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and there was the Toronto Dance Theatre in town. So I got back into dancing while studying art. They had fabulous instructors. After dancing and painting for a year, I realized I couldn’t put 100% into two different things. I stopped painting and moved back to Gloucester and joined MJT Movement Theater, a dance company in Boston.
What kind of dancing were you doing?
It was always modern dance, except as a child I did tap and ballet. I moved to East Gloucester and opened The Gloucester Studio, right next to the North Shore Arts Association on Reed’s Wharf. I supported myself through the dance studio and was in the company in Boston for a couple of years and performed regionally. Dance was my focus until I got married and moved from Cape Ann to Vermont in 1983, and Brooklyn, NY, in 1984. We had our daughter, Casey, and moved to Groton, MA, a couple of years later. My husband Alden became assistant head at a private school. Then I got back into dance and painting and also became a massage therapist.
How do you think your dance experience influences your painting? There are dancers in many of your paintings, but perhaps there’s more to it.
I apply the elements of composition that I know through my experience as a choreographer—space, shape, energy, and time—to painting. I feel where things go and where there needs to be movement in a specific direction.
In choreography, you want variety by changing size and speed, and you can kind of add that to a painting. I’m always looking to make a painting cohesive, and at the same time vary certain aspects. When I’m painting, I use a lot of movement of my large joints, and I think that works really well with my brain too. It opens things up.
When you start a painting, do you already know what you want the finished piece to look like?
When I start, I know what my painting is going to be and it never is that [laughs].
What happens along the way?
I’ve wondered that myself. I have an idea, and sometimes I will block in my idea, and then I might turn the painting upside down and look at the shapes that are there and dismiss the idea. Or I might just start putting papers on. There are so many paintings under each of my paintings.
I take photos along the way, so I can see my first idea and how it became something completely unrelated. It’s kind of like having a child. You have this idea and you get it started. Then you have to encourage it to go whatever way it wants to go, with a little guidance [smiles], as long as it’s taking guidance from you. Ultimately you go along with it and appreciate what it wants to be.
How do you know when a painting is finished?
I’m bad at that [laughs]. Things are usually done way before I recognize it. I’ll look back and say, “that was beautiful, why did I keep going?”
Many of your paintings include a person. Are you painting from photographs or from your head?
A lot of my early collage paintings were from early drawings I had done in figure model sessions [drawings of nudes]. Then I started putting clothes on them. It was fun, like playing with paper dolls.
You use some nontraditional tools, such as painting with a credit card.
That was influenced by Sue McPhail.
Is it easier to paint with a MasterCard or a Visa?
I like using the hotel cards [laughs].
What music do you listen to while painting?
Steve Reich and Phillip Glass are the best to listen to while painting because they do long pieces that are minimalistic. They don’t require you to pay attention to the music. Sometimes I’m happy playing dance music, such as urban Latino music that you might hear in a Zumba class. Tango music is great too.
Can you tell me about the painting Chronicles of Isabella?
That started as a couple doing tango, but as it evolved I didn’t like the guy in the painting, maybe simply because he was in a dark suit. That painting took forever. I took pictures of it in progress and would look at them on my iPad instead of looking at the actual painting. I do that often. There’s something about seeing the work in a smaller view that makes things more clear. I use the Graphic app on my iPad. On the imported photo, I can change areas and details without affecting the painting. It’s a way to see what might work better.
I decided to get rid of the male figure. Because of how the female figure was left without a dance partner, I thought to myself, “what is she doing if she’s not holding onto a man’s shoulder?” So, I put a painting in there. I had recently been to the Galapagos, and that’s where the title Isabella comes from. [Isabela Island is the largest island in the Galapagos and is named after Queen Isabella of Castile.] I had been there on a sailing ship and that’s where this apparition of a sailboat from a distance and the waterfowl in the inner painting came from.
If people ask you what you were thinking of when you were creating a particular painting, and what it’s about, do you want to tell them or do you want them to figure it out themselves?
I love for them to figure it out themselves.
I was looking at your painting, Enough. I thought it could either be saying to women, “You are enough as you are” or it could be, “We’ve had enough!” I don’t know which one it is.
I don’t either. I had both of those feelings very strongly when I was painting it. We’ve had enough, and we are enough. The X’s in the painting refer to our chromosomes, and is an homage to Laurie Anderson’s song, Let X=X.
I know from your demo that you have an environmental approach to using paint. Can you talk about that?
I’m still learning. I’m trying to be conscientious [about avoiding getting acrylic paint beads into our water supply]. I use rags to wipe the paint from my brushes, dip the brushes in water, and wipe them again. Most of the paint ends up on the rags, and once they dry out, I throw out the rags. I have a bucket where I dump the water from cleaning my brushes. That bucket has been in my studio for two years and the water slowly evaporates. Ultimately, you get it to the point where the water on top gets clear and you can pour that off. What’s left will dry up.
Are you painting mostly with acrylics these days?
Yes. But for the infrequent times when I paint outside, I will use oils because acrylic dries too quickly.
When you are painting a dancer, are you using reference photos, looking at yourself in a mirror, or painting it from your head?
All of those. A lot of it is me just knowing how the body works from all my years of dance and massage therapy. But sometimes I’m stuck, and I think, “this is not really physiologically possible,” [laughs]. Why did I do that? And sometimes I will ask my daughter, who is also a dancer, to pose and I’ll take pictures. She was the model for the Rockport demo of a dancer.
To what extent do you mix colors versus use them out of the tube?
When I was painting with oil, I would mix, mix, mix. When I’m awake at night, that’s how I go back to sleep. I start mixing colors in my head. “Ok, I’ve been awake for 15 minutes, let’s pull out that yellow ochre [laughs] and mix it.”
There are a few colors that I love straight, both in oil and acrylic. Cadmium Red Light, Yellow Green, and Indian Yellow are some. For me, mixing acrylic paint is necessarily a quicker task than mixing oil.
What’s the best advice you received as an artist?
Use a bigger brush.
What did that mean for you?
It meant free yourself up. Don’t collapse into the painting. Be more expansive. Use your large joints [laughs]! Using a bigger brush is like, don’t forget to keep dancing while you are painting.
Who are some artists and creative people you admire?
Twyla Tharp, Helen Frankenthaler, Susan Guest-McPhail, Kat Masella, Cindy Journey (she works with metals and her recent work is very monochromatic), Christine Whalen-Waller, Heidi Caswell Zander’s work, Peggi Kroll Roberts from California, and Lynn Sanders from Louisiana. I’ve left out so many. Every time I go to a gallery, I’m newly inspired.
You have a prominent signature on your paintings. Is there a story there?
There are a few reasons for it. In this day and age, you can’t be sure that anyone will buy your work because they can take a picture of it and get it printed. If you are going to steal my work, at least you’re going to have to deal with the big signature [laughs]!
Also, in some of the music I listen to, often the singers and musicians say their names and it’s part of the song, and I love that [her signature is part of her paintings in a similar way]. I did a painting called Signed this summer and put my signature in four places [laughs]. It’s my own little war.
When you are painting, what’s your state of mind: stressed, in flow, pouring your emotions out, working through “stuff,” or something else?
I don’t think I’m stressed or pouring my emotions out. Certainly, there is some output of emotion that makes its way into the work.
Your paintings, to me, show so much joy. But I know it’s not possible to be in joyful bliss all the time.
I think it depends on what kind of painting I’m doing. When I’m doing plein air work, I do get into a meditative state. But at the same time, all painting is decisions. You make a decision, you make a decision, you make a decision. As much as we say it’s your emotions and your joy, you are making decisions. If I think something I did wasn’t right and go over it, then I make a decision about how I will deal with the decision I previously made.
Lightning-round questions: People often bond over food and art, and here are quick questions about both.
Favorite breakfast. Kale, carrot, and protein drink.
Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks? Neither.
If tomorrow was your birthday and I was going to bake you a cake, what kind should I make? Carrot cake, please. With very little icing.
Most memorable meal. My mom’s green pork chops. When I was around 13, she made pork chops with mint jelly on them, which turned them green [laughs]. She was horrified! We all thought they looked terrible, but they tasted good [more laughing].
You are hosting a dinner party and get to invite six people living or dead. Who are you inviting and what are you serving? My mom and my dad, my daughter, my husband, my friend Jane Winsor, who was an artist, and my mother-in-law. I would serve them takeout [laughs].
Favorite piece of art that you own. I’m not good at favorites because it changes.
Do you have a painting of yours that you don’t want to give up? I have a painting I’m not giving up now. It’s a still life called Lilacs for Luanne and it’s hanging in my bedroom. Luanne is my mom. She struggled to grow lilacs for years.
Most captivating museum visit. Maryhill Museum of Art in Washington state. It’s in the middle of nowhere and it had Rodin sculptures and chess boards with homemade chess prices. Also, I went to the Sorolla Museum in Madrid. That was hard to beat as it was his home and enormous, light-filled studio.
Palate & Palette menu
Here’s what I would make if Dale and her husband came to dinner, which they are invited to do:
Spinach salad with apples, walnuts, toasted almonds, and a champagne vinegar vinaigrette
Ottolenghi Butternut squash lasagna
Carrot cake with light frosting on Dale’s piece
Where to find Dale Sherman Blodget (and you should)!
I know Dale (through dance aerobic classes) and have seen her artwork in-person displayed at various shows. I love the textured stuff! The discussion of her process and techniques was interesting and enlightening. In addition, I learned about things in her eclectic background of which I had been unaware. Nice interview of a talented artist, Amy.
What a lovely interview with a lovely painter and person. Her inner beauty shows through in her work. Thank you!