Dr. David Hodo is Selma Art Guild Featured Artist for April, May

If you ask Dr. David Hodo of Summerfield about his art, he will ask you what you see in it.

That’s because the Selma psychiatrist, the Selma Art Guild’s (SAG) Featured Artist for the Months of April and May, is more interested in what you see than what he thinks it is.

Hodo’s art show reception will be Sunday, April 10 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the SAG Gallery at 508 Selma Ave.

Hodo, a board-certified psychiatrist, has practiced in Selma for 47 years since 1975 and makes his home in Summerfield with his wife, Paige Hodo.

Hodo is originally from Alexander City, attended Auburn University and was accepted to medical school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) after three years. He earned his medical degree from UAB.

Hodo said he became interested in art while he was in the Navy and was on call at a dispensary. He said he decided to buy a sketch pad and some oil pastels and started doing sketches “while I was sitting there doing nothing at all.”

Hodo started doing things like painting abstract Halloween type masks. He said while in the Navy, he also signed up for a course in art the Memphis Museum of Fine Art.

While Hodo said his first art teacher was really good, he said he painted and drew and did all kinds of other things with no further instruction other than a pencil sketch lesson with Selma artist Cam Walker Guarino until he recently took a class in Selma taught by award winning artist Richard Mills. Mills is Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts at Auburn University Montgomery (AUM).

Hodo said when his kids were in college, he would get index cards and do a painting on one side and a post card on the other. He said two of his children “hated them,” but one, Sarah, his middle daughter, “really liked them and would put them on her walls.”

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“As a physician, I’m frequently on hold on the telephone,” he said. “So I developed the habit while sitting there that I’d be sketching with the other hand.”

Hodo said art became more “fun and interesting” for him when his wife began taking an art class from Mills in Selma. “So, I decided that I would try it,” he said.

Hodo also said what he is doing now is much more interesting, more complicated and better. And he said his work now is pretty much “all abstract.”

When asked if he painted things like abstract landscapes, Hodo pointed to a painting he was working on and said, “Tell me what you think. Obviously, for you, it is whatever you think it is.” When told his painting looked like a forest, he said, “I think it has resemblance to a forest. You know, the lines are basically vertical, not horizontal. I’m not through with it.”

Hodo explained that his art is “not meant to be representational.” He said when his wife paints a cow, it looks like a cow. “Not me,” he said.

Hodo said his medium of choice is oil paints because he “likes the way it looks.” However, he said, over the years he has worked in other mediums including colored inks, soft pastels, hard pastels and charcoal. He said his first art teacher taught him to take a piece of charcoal and go from one side of a big sheet of paper to the other and to “be free, express yourself. Don’t be uptight and nitpicking.”

Hodo said he just wants to be the best artist he can be and that he was “delighted” when he was selected to be the Selma Art Guild’s featured artist of the month. “It’s going to be fun,” Hodo said. “A few of my friends will be there that I wouldn’t ordinarily see. You know, if I would just sell one painting, I would be thrilled.”

In addition to be being a psychiatrist and an artist, Hodo is an assistant Presbyterian preacher, owns horses and dogs, and fixes fences.

The Selma Art Guild was started in the 1970s by local artists to promote art and provide opportunities for artists.