Biography

Dawson was born near Pwllheli

Pwllheli

Pwllheli is a community and the main market town of the Llŷn Peninsula in Gwynedd, north-western Wales. It has a population of 3,861, of which a large proportion, 81 per cent, are Welsh speaking. Pwllheli is the place where Plaid Cymru was founded. It is the birthplace of Albert Evans-Jones -...

. He studied at Chelsea College of Art from 1984 to 1987, followed by the Royal College of Art

Royal College of Art

The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...

 from 1987 to 1989, where he was a contemporary of Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin

Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....

 and Jake and Dinos Chapman

Jake and Dinos Chapman

Iakovos "Jake" Chapman and Konstantinos "Dinos" Chapman are English visual artists, often known as the Chapman Brothers, who work together as a collaborative sibling duo...

. Unlike them, however, even at this stage Dawson considered himself to be almost exclusively a painter.

After leaving the Royal College of Art he became an assistant to the artist Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud

Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...

 in 1991, whilst working for Freud's art dealer at the time James Kirkman,and he continues in this role today, as well as being a frequent model for Freud's paintings.

Dawson exhibited his paintings at Marlborough Fine Art in London in a two person show with Catherine Goodman

Catherine Goodman (painter)

-Biography:Goodman was born in London. She studied at Queen's College, London from 1972 to 1979 and Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London from 1979 to 1984, followed by the Royal Academy Schools, London from 1984 to 1987...

 in 2004, and in 2011 a private solo show at 61a Cadogan Square in London.

As well as being a painter, Dawson is also a photographer, with his most well known photographs being a series started in 2000 of Freud at work. These were shown at London's National Portrait Gallery in 2004, and 26 of them were acquired for the gallery's collection, including images of Freud painting David Hockney

David Hockney

David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....

, visits to Freud's studio by Neil MacGregor

Neil MacGregor

Robert Neil MacGregor, OM, FSA is an art historian and museum director. He was the Editor of the Burlington Magazine from 1981 to 1987, the Director of the National Gallery, London, from 1987 to 2002, and was appointed Director of the British Museum in 2002...

 and Frank Auerbach

Frank Auerbach

Frank Helmut Auerbach is a painter born in Germany although he has been a naturalised British citizen since 1947.-Biography:Auerbach was born in Berlin, the son of Max Auerbach, a patent lawyer, and Charlotte Nora Burchardt, who had trained as an artist...

, and Freud painting Queen Elizabeth II. A number of Dawson's photographs of Freud also appeared in 2006 in the book Freud at Work..

Dawson is represented by Marlborough Fine Art in London.

Style and Influences

Dawson's paintings are realist in style and predominantly urban. His work has affinities with the School of London painters, including the paintings of Frank Auerbach, who is an acknowledged influence on him. However, there is a much clearer use of linear elements, with drawn structural lines often remaining evident in the finished paintings.

The urban subject matter could more accurately be described as 'suburban' as Dawson tends to concentrate on scenes from the area in which he lives, Kensal Rise in north London. He is quoted as saying, 'Looking out of the window is my starting point.' This approach has led to a series of paintings based on the cul-de-sac in which Dawson lives.

Although Dawson has acknowledged influence from abstract painters, including Jackson Pollock, his only works that are near abstract are a series of 'cloud paintings' depicting clouds against the sky. These were described by Dawson as being made to allow him to 'play with paint'. In his own estimation, however, he prefers to work from a physical subject, pushing it towards abstraction and then bringing it back towards realism.

Further reading

• Marlborough Fine Art, Two London Painters: Catharine Goodman and David Dawson (London: Marlborough Fine Art, 2004)

• Lucian Freud, Freud at Work (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006)

External links

• Marlborough Artists' Pages