“A gallery filled with Dommisse’s landscapes creates such a sense of peace and well-being in the viewer that any pre-show agitation is replaced with a quiet inner harmony, not unlike the paintings themselves. These are works to live with, to derive contentment from, to look at again and again and see some detail unnoticed before.
         “In Osprey Moon, the largest painting in the show, the calm water creates an unbroken expanse of space so pure and refreshing that the viewer sees the land ‘before pollution’ or even before humans appear to destroy the scene. You do expect animals to appear on the shore, free to explore the water uninterrupted and unafraid. The closer you look, the more you see. For example, to the left of the shoreline, above the trees, the faint image of the moon gradually comes into view. This attention to detail is apparent in all of Dommisse’s work.
         “While the joy and exuberance in the landscapes stand in juxtaposition to the cooler, more detached waterscapes, all of Dommisse’s paintings have ‘staying power’ and become more satisfying the longer they are viewed. It is no wonder his work is so widely collected.”

Martha Mabey
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Tues. Jan. 28, 1997

“Better yet, take in Harmony & Discord: American Landscape Painting Today, which opened this week in the Virginia Museum’s contemporary galleries. This exhibition absolutely glows in its testimony to the continuing vitality of American landscape art.
         “Neither is pure landscape neglected. Richmond artist Durwood Dommisse, long a master at sparring but unerring color placement in his grassy foregrounds to suggest wildflowers, is at the top of his form in Near Yancey Mills. Here those economical touches of color have blossomed into a wonderfully orchestrated interplay of reds and yellows.”

Roy Proctor
Art & Life, The Richmond News Leader
Sat. Aug. 11, 1990

“Dommisse is a visual poet of the ordinary. He continues to see those things that the rest of us, going about the hurly-burly of life, only look at – mindlessly, insensitively – and don’t really see at all. There’s immense force in his quiet vision because he makes us see life afresh.
         “In Dommisse’s basically clear skies, a fleece of clouds takes on the force of a wonderous intrusion. A small boat with its gentle wake glimpsed from afar in The James River in June study has the surprising force of a galleon, so tranquil is the scene otherwise.”

Roy Proctor
Art & Life, The Richmond News Leader
Sat. Dec. 7, 1985

“Durwood Dommisse’s landscape paintings are remarkably consistent. His scenes of rural Virginia and the woodlands of northern Wisconsin bring to the landscape a seriousness and a technical virtuosity that is rare in today’s urban-dominated art. These have depth. The foliage is a deep blend of color, often as many as six greens and six browns emerging from one bush or wild shrub. The skies are an honest, clear blue, and the naturalism enables the viewer to sense the most intense or the most subtle of atmospheric conditions. …and these paintings speak with the soundness of art study. They reach to historical concepts from a contemporary vantage point, and while the technique is fully versed, the ultimate vision is a highly personal statement.”

Robert Merritt
Art Review, Richmond Times-Dispatch
(date uncertain)

“Walking Evening Creek presents a scene that is utterly mundane – so mundane, indeed, that most other landscape artists would walk right through it without a thought as they continued their quest for the picturesque. A perfectly ordinary marshy field, which contains what appears to be a dead tree, is bound by a perfectly ordinary stand of trees, and both field and forest lie under a perfectly ordinary blue sky. But to describe Walking Evening Creek in those terms is to miss the point of this significant artist. Dommisse’s painting technique and ability to delve into the ordinary are anything but ordinary. Not only that, but Dommisse’s knack for color placement has an air of inevitability that is refreshing. Differing patches of grass and standing water refer subtly to each other and establish an almost musical counterpoint across the canvas.”

Roy Proctor
Art & Life, The Richmond News Leader
Sat. Feb 4, 1984