Verne Dawson

A painter of both fantastical landscapes and the cosmos Verne Dawson weaves the prehistoric past into the present embracing a vast history of some 30,000 years. His work expresses a long held interest in charting the continuities of human nature and culture and the perpetuation of methods of timekeeping through oral and visual traditions. Delving into popular culture his paintings often explore mathematical and astronomical signs in folklore, calendars and astrology. Despite a preoccupation with symbolic reference, Dawson's visual language does not attempt to idealise his subject matter. Rather, his painting style is self-effacing and grounded in the vernacular, offering careful consideration of narrative through composition and detail.

Often, his paintings are spacious, fantastic landscapes rendered in lush greens and blues, dominated by expansive skies, large-scale architectural structures or natural formations. Dotted throughout are scenes of people carrying out daily activities, engaged in pagan-like rituals or carnival feats. Dawson's work advocates a different relationship to nature, an awareness of cyclical time as opposed to a purely linear time and ultimately a responsibility to an environment where technology and ecology can, he suggests coexist.

Born in 1961, Verne Dawson divides his time between New York and Pennsylvania. He has had solo exhibitions at Le Consortium, Dijon (2006), Camden Arts Centre, London (2005) and Kunsthalle, Zurich (2002), and has been included in international group exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo (2007), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2005) and Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2002).

Exhibitions