Janet Dawson b. 1935

  • Artist (Painter),
  • Artist (Draughtsman),
  • Designer ,
  • Artist (Printmaker)
Painter, printmaker and designer working in the mid twentieth century. She studied at the National Gallery School in the 1950s and joined the stable of Gallery A, exhibiting first in 1961. She later curated "The Bauhaus: Aspects and Influence" in the same year at the gallery. She also designed a limited edition of tables for Laminex ca.1964.
Tags: Archibald Prize, furniture designer, printmaker, curator

Janet Dawson has had a distinguished career as an abstract and figurative painter and printmaker. Dawson studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne and in 1952 the National Gallery of Victoria awarded her a Travelling Scholarship to London where she studied at the Slade School and Central School. In the 1960s she designed Laminex-based furniture for Gallery A in Sydney ca.1964, one item of which is in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection.

After Dawson moved to Binalong, NSW, in 1973 her work became, as Andrew Sayers says, “engaged with the qualities of the natural world: not only the landscape, but the sheen of birds’ feathers, the shapes of growing things, the endless pictorial possibilities of vegetables tended in the garden”. Since this time Dawson has been concerned with reflecting her own world.
In 2006 a travelling survey exhibition of Dawson’s work began at the Bathurst Regional Gallery, and travelled to the SH Ervin Gallery, Queensland University Art Museum, Tasmanian Art Gallery and Mornington Peninsular Art Gallery. Prior survey exhibitions have been held at the National Gallery of Victoria (1979) and the National Gallery of Australia (1996). Her work is held in major Australian and international collections including the Royal Society, London.

Painter

Deutscher Menzies 1 May 2002, lot 126 (ill. col. Est. $2,000-2,500) was the interesting early Ballerina c.1953, originally owned by John Howley, a fellow student at the National Gallery School in the early 1950s, exhibited Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne, June 1989, cat.13.

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Writers:
Staff Writer
downes
fishel
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2014