ROCKLAND — Lincolnville artist Lois Dodd has been selected to receive the 2015 Maine in America Award. The award honors an individual or group who has made an outstanding contribution to Maine's role in American art.

The previous winners of the Maine in America Award were John Wilmerding (2006), Andrew Wyeth (2007), Will Barnet (2008), Robert Indiana (2009), Alex Katz (2010), Paul Caponigro (2011) and Dahlov Ipcar (2012), Matthew Simmons (2013) and The Shakers of Sabbathday Lake (2014).

Lois Dodd is a nationally acclaimed painter and long-time resident of Lincolnville. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, from 1945 to 1948 she studied at Cooper-Union in New York. She was the only woman founder of Tanager Gallery, an artist co-op integral to the Tenth Street art scene in New York in the 1950s and where she showed from 1952 to 1962.

From 1971 to 1992 Dodd taught at Brooklyn College, and since 1980 has served on the board of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

An elected member of the American Academy of the Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Academy of Design, she was one of the members of the New York avant-garde who came to Maine and explored its coast through their work, among them Alex Katz, Fairfield Porter, Rackstraw Downes and Neil Welliver.

Her work has been shown and is in the collection of major art museums throughout the United States. The Farnsworth Art Museum, in Rockland, is giving the the 2015 Maine in America Award to Dodd. The award is presented by the Farnsworth's Presidents Council to honor an individual or group who has made an outstanding contribution to Maine's role in American art.