Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 1, 1992 TAG: 9202010321
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
FORMER NS LAWYER KEMPER DOBBINS DIES
Kemper A. Dobbins, a retired railroad lawyer who was well known in the Roanoke Valley as a painter and student of painting, died Thursday at the age of 82.Dobbins painted in watercolor and specialized in railroad subjects. In a 1987 column for this newspaper, critic Ann Weinstein said his paintings "constitute an often dark poetry of various locations, environments and implied activities connected with the railroad."
Though he studied for awhile at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Dobbins was largely self-trained as a painter. He visited museums regularly and was a "voracious" reader on the subject of art, according to his widow, Elizabeth.
In the Roanoke area, Dobbins was a fixture at gallery talks, workshops and exhibitions and was known for taking copious notes.
"I never saw anybody study a show the way he did," said fellow watercolorist John Will Creasy of Roanoke.
Dobbins was born in England of American parents. He studied law at Yale University and became a lawyer for the old Nickel Plate Railroad in 1937. While working for the Nickel Plate in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, he began painting seriously in 1956.
Dobbins moved to the then-Norfolk & Western Railway when the Nickel Plate was merged into it in 1964. He retired from the Norfolk Southern legal department in 1974.
Lotz Roanoke Chapel is handling funeral arrangements.