James Dodds

Maritime Painter, Carver and Author / JamesDodds.co.uk

James’ Biography

James Dodds was born among the estuaries and saltings of Essex, a county on the East Coast of England. From an early age he was mad for boats. When formal schooling didn’t work out for him, at fifteen, he took up a shipbuilding apprenticeship at an ancient boatyard in the town of Maldon. The work appealed to him as did the independence it provided. But at nineteen he decided to attend art school, earning degrees from The Chelsea College of Art and subsequently from London’s Royal College of Art.

Since then he has become one of Great Britain’s leading artists. The work you will see on the OCH website are oil paintings of historic vessels as they appear under construction and after years of hard service along the British coast. Thanks to several trips to New England, there are also renderings of notable boats from these waters.

In addition to his work in oils, Dodds is well known for his series of linocuts of British sea coast towns in which, after painstaking research, he carefully blends past and present. Thanks to his Maine sojourns, he has also worked up linocuts of Rockport Marine, The Brooklin Boat Yard, Benjamin River Marine, and The Bridges Point Boat Yard.