Painter, notably of portraits, born in Chester. Her parents encouraged her early interest in art. She won a Royal Drawing Society prize in 1909 and her mother took in paying guests to send her to Liverpool School of Art, 1917–21, where Will Penn taught her the use of a limited palette; by the 1950s she developed an interest in more positive colour. In 1921 won a Royal Exhibition, one of many awards, to Royal College of Art, 1921–5. While teaching at Walthamstow Technical College, 1925–30, obtained portrait commissions through William Rothenstein, in 1928 marrying the artist Douglas Percy Bliss. She being a perfectionist in all things, domestic life eroded Dodd’s time for painting. Although when a student she had painted so concentratedly that she forgot to eat and became ill, as a housewife she said that “when there is dust on the stairs, I cannot settle down to painting.