Photorealist Painter · New Jersey
From 13 years as the world’s only full-time blimp painter to large-scale photorealist canvases of the Atlantic coast and the boardwalk architecture of Asbury Park.
View the WorkThe Artist
Burton Dodge is a realist/photorealist painter based in New Jersey with a career few others can claim. After a restless year in art school he built a lucrative practice painting billboards across California, New York, and his home state — then, in the mid-1980s, took a chance and became the world’s only full-time blimp painter for 13 years, working on ships for Budweiser, Fuji Film, MetLife and others. The studio practice now centers on large-scale photorealist canvases of the Atlantic, the Northern California surf, and the boardwalk architecture of Asbury Park.
“Photorealism has always appealed to me, because of the way it isolates a small piece of reality and really puts it in your face — accentuating the smallest details, magnifying things we usually take for granted or overlook in the real world. It makes you look at things a lot differently and elevates your thinking process.”
The paintings are made to have a physical impact on the viewer: medium- to large-scale canvases — up to 40 × 60 inches and beyond, the largest over nine feet across — that render their subjects larger than life. The training from years of billboard and blimp work translates directly: colors deepened, brushwork adapted, every element built to read at distance and at close range.
Artistic Approach
“Photorealism has always appealed to me, because of the way it isolates a small piece of reality and really puts it in your face — accentuating the smallest details, magnifying things we usually take for granted or overlook in the real world.”
The paintings are made to have a physical impact on the viewer. Medium- to large-scale canvases — up to 40 × 60 inches and beyond, the largest over nine feet across — that render their subjects larger than life.
The primary drawing is made at scale, with every element in proportion, then transferred to the canvas or cloth using a grid. The training from years of billboard and blimp work translates directly: colors deepened, brushwork adapted to read at distance and close range alike.
Burton Dodge’s paintings come out of a career spent painting things that had to read across a parking lot or from a quarter mile away — billboards through the 1980s, and thirteen unbroken years as the only full-time blimp painter in the world. That long apprenticeship in scale shapes everything he does on canvas now.
What separates the work from a copy of a photograph is the editing. Dodge picks a small piece of reality — a wave at the moment of break, a copper-domed pavilion in afternoon light, a pickup truck under the Casino’s portico — and puts it in front of the viewer at a scale where it cannot be ignored. The smallest details are accentuated, not softened.
Scale moves with intent. A 16 × 20 jetty study and a 64 × 108 oil of a figure above the Atlantic come from the same hand. The smaller works hold their detail; the large paintings give the eye room to walk across the surface the way the eye walks across the real view. Both share a single conviction: that a thing observed closely, and rendered at full attention, can be made to feel larger than life.
Studio Notes
Artistic Vision
“Photorealism has always appealed to me, because of the way it isolates a small piece of reality and really puts it in your face — accentuating the smallest details, magnifying things we usually take for granted or overlook in the real world. It makes you look at things a lot differently and elevates your thinking process.”
“Creating large-scale paintings requires distinct technical skills — not unlike those required for painting billboards and blimps. The colors have to be deeper, the brushwork has to be adapted to paint something large and make it look photographic. You need a feel for what you’re painting — an internal roadmap to make it come out right.”
Burton Dodge
Influences
Chuck Close
1940–2021
American Photorealism
Richard Estes
b. 1932
American Photorealism
Edward Hopper
1882–1967
American Realism · Coast
Winslow Homer
1836–1910
American Marine Painting
Andrew Wyeth
1917–2009
American Realism
Rackstraw Downes
b. 1939
Plein-air Realism
Get in Touch
For inquiries about available works, commissions, or to see new paintings as they come out of the studio, reach out below.