Robert dawson artist biography

Born in Sacramento, California, 1950.
Robert Dawson is an American photographer and instructor of photography at San Jose State University and Stanford University.
Born in 1926, Robert Dawson early-developed a fascination and talent for art which led to him being offered a scholarship to Stoke-on-Trent College of Art at 17.

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Born in 1953, Robert Dawson lives and works in London. He studied at Camberwell College of Arts and at the Royal College of Art (Department of Ceramics and Glass).

Robert Dawson speculates that life would be unbearable without the vulnerability engendered by its inherent uncertainties and mysteries. He likes to focus on the disconcerting, uncertain element and his body of work can be summed up, in his own words, as “aesthetic sabotage.”

The artist applies advanced photographic deformation and computerized image processing techniques to tiles or plates, creating odd perspectives and deforming traditional decorative motifs. One such motif is the Willow pattern, often called Blue Willow, inspired by older Chinese designs. As well-known in England as Toile de Jouy is in France, this pattern originated in 17th-century England and was later copied by the Chinese who, in the 19th century, produced their own version of an English pattern that originally drew its inspiration from China.

Most of his work reflects considerations pertaining to the nature of the decorated surfac

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Robert Dawson, Painter, Poet, Musician, 1926-1997

This sensitive and revealing film traces Robert Dawson's early life as a jazz saxophonist, his teaching career and his art.

"He wanted to be a painter, a poet and a musician and I think he achieved all those things." Dawson's widow, Peggy guides us through aspects of her late husband's life revisiting places in Staffordshire and Wales that had been such an inspiration to him and meeting again with Sir Kyffin Williams who so admired his work.

Robert Dawson was always one of the quiet men of art, a man of great modesty. Unlike so many of the younger artists today, he did not aspire to fame or artistic acclaim but quietly contented himself with working out his own problems in his own honest way.

Because he painted what he loved he was able to communicate that love to others. For this reason, I believe, his work will always be appreciated long after so much of the facile creations produced today have been forgotten.

Sir Kyffin Williams, Anglesey, 2000

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Robert Dawson

Artist

born Sacramento, CA 1950

Born: Sacramento, California, United States
Active in: San Francisco, California, United States

Biography: Born in Sacramento, California, 1950. Currently resides in San Francisco. Dawson teaches at San Francisco State University and San Jose State University. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1984 and 1988. Recent solo exhibitions of his work inclue a show at the Gallery Min, Tokyo, Japan (1988). Since 1983 he has been co-director of the Water in the West Project, a collaborative photographic exploration of our culture's relationship to, and use of, water in the arid lands of the American West. Recent publications include The Great Central Valley Project (University of California Press, 1989) and Robert Dawson Photographs (Gallery Min, Tokyo, Japan, 1988).
Merry A. Foresta, Stephen Jay Gould, and Karal Ann Marling Between Home and Heaven: Contemporary American Landscape Photography (Washington, D.C. and Albuquerque, New Mexico: The National Museum of American Art in as