Barbara Dawson
My art explores a connection with landscape and the environment. I combine the visuals and stories of place and memory. My inspiration of place can use the distant mountains, the wetlands and shorelines of Jervis Bay or the forests of the National Parks. My artwork uses the evocative and subdued effects of layered colour and texture. This can include print processes such as plant prints, etchings or collographs. Drawing or stitching are often added as a means of mapping and recording my responses. It is through the layering of different procedures that I am able to make my own model of a particular landscape.
Barbara Dawson
Left: A forgotten land
Right: Persistence
SAA: How would you describe your Arts Practice?:
BD: My current artwork explores a connection to place and the environment and my interpretation of erosion and disintegration. On one level my work is a contemplation of the physical weathering in the environment - abstract representations of a landscape I engage with. At a deeper more personal level it is a reflection on ageing and weathering over a human lifetime; a parallel landscape of outer and inner worlds. I do not wish to reproduce the landscape itself, but what I feel and experience. I aim for an abstract representation having no desire to faithfully or literally reproduce it. Instead, I try to provide the viewer with an artwork they can lose themselves in and discover their own sense of quietness and stillness.
Mediums include natural colorants, such as charcoal, rust, ochres, chalk pastel and botanical inks, making a further connection with the qualities of the land. I often use old maps and other ephemera in my art. The colour palette is often limited, exploring tonal changes, sometimes adding stitch, which allows me to embrace the concept of time and timelessness.
Over the years I have used a variety of media and techniques from textiles to basketry to copper wire sculpture and from artists’ books to drawing and printmaking combining the visuals and stories of place and memory.
SAA: Have you done any study? related to art or not?
BD: I gained a Visual Art Degree at the Canberra School of Art, ANU as an almost mature-age student and went on to study a Graduate Diploma and Master of Education. I spent twenty years in Canberra schools teaching visual art, media studies and photography. I am a firm believer in professional development and continually experiment, explore and learn. I made this a part of my teaching career and I am still continually ‘professionally developing’ in my retirement. I attend drawing classes and in 2020 I was awarded a Shoalhaven Arts Board Grant to work beside an master printmaker updating my skills and covering a broad range of etching and collography printmaking techniques
SAA: What do you find most inspiring about your art space?
BD: I continually photograph my world and inspiration comes from this. This is my art space. I am fascinated by the outlines and shapes I see in the landscape, be it the contours and lines of the mountains around the ACT that I grew up with or the layers of the cliffs and rock faces of Jervis Bay, my current home, where I look for signs of the passage of time and the fragility in things. My actual studio is a large light filled airy room in our home looking out to Eucalypts and Casuarinas. The walls are covered with images and objects of inspiration, shelves with books and bowls of ‘nature finds’ and textiles. It also includes my drawing and mixed media table, a sewing space, an easel and an etching press.
SAA: What does a studio day in your life look like?
BD: I work in my studio every day. I have two streams to my art practice. One is my drawing, mixed media and printmaking and the other is my textiles art. I also enjoy working with photographic imagery and film on my Mac. Depending on what I am working towards my drawing or collaging can be slightly frenetic. If I feel the need for peace or a nature fix I begin an eco contact plant print gathering leaves from the back yard and setting them to boil on the veranda with the eucalyptus aroma filling the hose. My textiles with stitching are also my peaceful place and these are my evening activity.
SAA: How have you grown as an artist since starting out?
BD: I am in my seventh decade so ‘starting out’ was a long time ago. I tend to almost have a metamorphosis in my art practice every ten years. I really enjoy creating and am keeping myself fit so I can have at least a couple more ‘changes’. I think creating art makes you grow as a person.
SAA: What gets you up in the morning and drives you to be a working artist?
BD: I live in a coastal paradise so getting up each morning is a privilege and a pleasure. I have exhibited my art in selected, group and solo exhibitions for many years and I have the passion to keep on doing this. After many years of teaching I still have the drive to further my knowledge and every day I know will find an image or come up with another idea to create an artwork. A wise friend said to me ‘if someone who is moved enough to buy your works to want to live with them; want to have them enriching their life is a cause for validation and celebration’.
Rusted landscape II
SAA: How did you stay focussed and original when starting out?
BD: I believe every piece of art created by a person could be seen as new and original. I do not necessarily believe you have to stay focussed as an artist all the time. Experimentation is a gift we have as artists. I think I have always used the natural landscape as my starting point and it is forever there
SAA: What do you read, watch, listen to, do to stay inspired?
BD: I love the stillness and quiet in my working place and do not feel the need for music. I live within a stones throw of a National Park and the bird life is often a constant hum. I am more inspired by real time visits to beautiful scenery or to immerse myself in art in Galleries.
SAA: Do you have any advice for young artists?
BD: I loved teaching art and I loved opening students’ eyes to the visual world. My advice is, if you want to create then do it. If you want to study art, try to make it happen. If you want to travel and see the art of the world stage, live your dream. Art can be a career or a social activity. I believe that anyone can draw you just need to learn to see. Your art does not need to be representational or perfect. If it gives you joy and gives someone else joy then you are on the right track.