Dudley Zopp received her BA in 1963 and her MA in 1964 in French from the University of Kentucky in Lexington. She studied drawing and painting from 1986—1989 at the Alan R. Hite Institute, University of Louisville. Zopp exhibits nationally and frequently collaborates with other artists on special projects.

Zopp’s paintings unite her fascination with languages with her deep, immersive relationship with the landscape of the Northeast coast. She sees her paintings as translations of natural forms, recording the geological  history written on the ground around her. Her process of painting is like a transcript of geological activity. Surfaces are thickly layered, abraded, and rebuilt. Intact strata of buried color reveal themselves in small instances while pentimenti of once-solid forms linger in other places. The canvases themselves are heavy sculptural objects, mounted on weighty stretchers.

Quoting Samuel Beckett, Zopp states, “to restore silence is the role of objects.” Her paintings bring silence and meditation to our visually noisy world. They are, in Zopp’s words, “the objects and places that quiet our hearts and allow us to connect to a universal spirituality.”

Dr. Sarah Maline, 11 Artists, UMF Art Gallery, University of Maine at Farmington, 2002. Published in conjunction with the exhibition 11 Artists, recognizing 2002 Maine Arts Commission Fellows