Chapter 1: What inspired David Dawson's large-scale landscape paintings?
Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, wherever you are in the world. I'm Robert Diamant and you're listening to Talk Art. Welcome to Talk Art. Today I am in London and I'm in the studio of a dear friend and actually a previous guest of Talk Art. We did previously discuss Another side of his life, which was working with the artist Lucian Freud.
And you can go back in the archive and hear that wonderful episode, which I think we recorded at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Chapter 2: How does plein air painting influence David Dawson's work?
But today we are here to talk about our guest's own work. He's been painting for, I think, four decades now. Yeah, and we are here to celebrate nature in a very simple way, I think is a good way of kind of describing it, because I think nature is such a central part of today's guest's work.
And when I was thinking about how I was feeling today, I was thinking about solitude and being present in nature, but also just in the act of painting. I think there's something really unique about painting, which is, you know, when you're in front of a blank canvas, the way an artist has to be quite present and at one with themselves, with the paint and maybe with the subject matter.
And the reason it's so interesting that I really want to explore today is this idea of plein air painting. And our guest has spent a lot of time obviously growing up in Wales, but actually makes paintings in Wales in nature. And I'm really excited to find out why that is so important in terms of the mark making that comes out of that.
And there's going to be a wonderful exhibition opening at the end of April at Gainsborough House, responding to Constable. And there's a number of artists who are going to be showing their work, including today's guest. So it's a really good opportunity to see his work in the UK. He has had recent exhibitions at Lorcan O'Neill's Gallery in Rome as well.
So some of you might have seen that in 2024.
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Chapter 3: What personal experiences shaped David Dawson's artistic journey?
But I'm really excited to see these new paintings, which I'm actually sat right in front of now with the wonderful painter himself. So I would like to welcome to Talk Art, David Dawson.
Hi there. Thanks very much. That's a great intro.
So I'm actually here with you in your studio and you're actually in the middle of making a new work.
Yes. So we're here in Kensal Rise. This is where I used to live. I always worked at home and I always had a home, the studio in my home. Whereas now I live down in Notting Hill at Lucien's studio and house. And I keep this place just purely all studio.
It's so great.
The way my daily life works out is I have a continual cycle of spending, say, 10 days, two weeks in Wales and then come back into London for, say, three weeks.
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Chapter 4: What role does solitude play in David Dawson's creative process?
And that pretty much is my rhythm all year round. The greatest enjoyment for me is being out on the land where I grew up. So I know this patch of land incredibly well. And this is Monmouthshire? No, Montgomeryshire. Oh, Montgomeryshire. Which is mid Wales. Okay. And it's just a patch of land that we moved there from Scotland.
My first nine years were spent on a very small little island called Islay, which is in the Hebrides. And at the time, there wasn't a high school. And mum and dad didn't want to send us to the mainland to boarding school because what really happened was the kids never really came back to the island. Right. So, mum being Welsh, they found another farm in Mid Wales.
So from the age of nine to 22, that's my formative years spent on this very remote hill farm. And were you always making art or drawing at that time?
Chapter 5: How does David Dawson balance his time between Wales and London?
I was good at drawing at school. I was working with my dad on the farm. I left school at 16. I'm a good shepherd. Yeah, I worked on the farm with my dad, but always wanting to go out into the world for myself. For me, it was a struggle that I felt a certain pressure that I should follow what my father wished or what my father did before me. And that for me was somehow wrong.
I had to find myself my own place in the world. And I thought the best way to sort of not only grow and educate yourself was through art. And my dad, being an educated man, was sort of encouraging of me. But he did make me choose one or the other. He said, you can't do both, which is a perceptive answer. I chose art.
I then applied to art schools and got into each one I applied to and then came into London. By then I was 22, 23.
Chapter 6: What techniques does David Dawson use to capture the essence of nature?
So where were these art schools?
So I did my foundation year at Cardiff. Oh, yes. And then my dad was quite elderly, so he wanted me back on the farm. So I felt the pressure. So I had spent a couple of years back working with my dad. Drawing and painting as the day went on. But then I applied to do a degree and each college I applied to, they accepted me in each one, which is very, which is nice. But I chose Chelsea.
I felt London was, being a capital, it attracts a bigger crowd of people. So therefore I am, and the museums that are in London.
I was going to say, you also have a proximity to like great historic art and a community.
Exactly, exactly. So I came into London to come straight into art school and then from Chelsea went straight to the Royal College where I met Tracy.
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Chapter 7: How does David Dawson's work reflect his connection to the Welsh landscape?
Oh yeah, because you were a student with Tracy Emmett.
And they put us both together in the same studio. That's why me and Tracy are good mates because we had those days. What year was that? 1987 we both went to the Royal College. So then my adult life has been in London.
I always felt this sort of rupture almost in my own personal inner life of this amazing time spent in the hills of Wales because we had to sell the farm for me to come to art school. And I felt, yeah, a sort of rupture in my memory, in a sense. I wasn't connected to it, and I felt that never left me. So I was in a very lucky position.
About 2009, a very small farm with some land came up at auction, and I just grabbed it, and it's over the hill from where I was brought up. Really? So it's the land I really, really know. No. And the other thing about being brought up in those formative teenage years, because it was such a remote part of the country, I spent a lot of time being solitary.
You know, you're up on the hills, you're looking after your animals. And that gives you time to think. And I was drawing and painting. So I've always been outside and reacting and responding to things.
being in the land so that for me is an absolute necessity i feel for my not my inner life but just for me to be to respond and react to the land i'm looking at and that's why i really love plein air painting
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Chapter 8: What advice does David Dawson have for aspiring artists?
So in your early student years, say, what were the subject matter of your paintings?
Well, at Chelsea Art School, I was painting... I was on the third floor and we had big windows. I was just painting the rooftops of Chelsea. Really? Yeah. And then at the Royal College, it was becoming more abstracted, which was a good learning curve. And then straight after the Royal College, I met Lucien. So I did...
I never stopped painting, but I was enraptured by watching Lucien work and what he was doing. So that was fascinating and brilliant. And then a really strong friendship with Lucien grew from that over 20 years.
Yeah, that must have been quite addictive in a way, like getting to see him work. It was fascinating for me. Especially because you love painting so much.
I love painting and I know about painting. And then to watch someone... who just got on with work in the studio. He was not on the hustle for, you know, the razzmatazz of New York or, you know, the sort of art scene that is very exciting and needed.
But Lucien was really quiet and just in the studio working and making the most extraordinary paintings that had real intent of seriousness, ambition, all the things I really like about art. He was doing it there in front of me. That kept me there. And, you know, we got on. We had a brilliant time together.
And when you were helping him as his assistant, did you still keep your own practice going?
Did you have time to? So the rhythm of every day was I'd go around first thing, set up his studio, see what's needed, and then very often not go back until evening. So I had the sort of the day for myself for painting. And that's how it developed really.
It's interesting thinking about the RCA, you were talking about going a bit more abstract because your work is a kind of meeting point of figurative painting. And sometimes architectural buildings will appear in your work or even humans. Like you sometimes have people in recent paintings I've seen working on the farm or different things like that.
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