This exhibition is not just about Hairy Maclary; it is the story of the artist. Writing and illustrating children's books is a time-consuming and professional occupation. Dodd trained as an artist in the 1960s and still works from her Pyes Pa studio.
Lynley Dodd (nee Weeks) was born in Rotorua in 1941. Her father was a forester, which meant the family lived in very small forestry settlements. In 1959, she began studying at Elam, the University of Auckland's School of Fine Arts. Like other art schools in New Zealand at the time, students spent much time learning to draw from "life". Examples of Dodd's life studies can be seen in the exhibition, including a work she made on her first day.I
n the early 1970s, Eve Sutton, a relative, suggested collaborating on a picture book. The Dodd family cat provided the inspiration, Sutton wrote the text, Dame Lynley did the illustrations and the result was My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes. A first book for both, it is still in print nearly four decades later.
In the mid-1970s, Dodd began to write as well as illustrate. The first of her own picture books was The Nickle Nackle Tree (1976) and she has written and illustrated 30 more in the years since.
In 1979, living in Lower Hutt, Dodd made a small sketch of an unkempt-looking dog. The sketch was penned on a page of a lined shopping pad.
Beneath it she wrote the words:
"One morning at nine,
on his way to the park,
went Hairy Maclary
from Donaldson's Dairy."
Slightly different from the words that would eventually grace the pages of Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy (1983), the first in the series, but nevertheless key words in the life of this dog. These words would change Dodd's life.
The Return of Lynley Dodd: A Retrospective runs at Tauranga Art Gallery November 10 to January 13.
