Janet Dawson

Janet Dawson MBE (born 1935, Sydney) is an Australian artist who was a pioneer of abstract painting in Australia in the 1960s, having been introduced to abstraction during studies in England while she lived in Europe 1957–1960 She has exhibited across Australia and overseas, and her work is held in major Australian and English collections. In 2025-2026, the Art Gallery of New South Wales is dedicating a retrospective to Dawson's work.

Career Dawson was born in Sydney in 1935 and spent her early years in Forbes. She started to take a keen interest in art at age 11 beginning her formal art tuition in Saturday morning classes at H. Septimus Power's private art school from 1946 to 1949, before living in Clarence Street, East Malvern working as a doctor's receptionist while she studied (1952 to 1956) at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne first under William Dargie, who was then replaced by Alan Sumner as head of school. Art critic Robert Hughes in 1962 after Sumner's resignation wrote complaining that "since his appointment as the school's head in 1947, Mr Sumner seems to have produced no young painter whose work is of any significance whatever — except Janet Dawson, whose unquestionable talent comes, in part, from a revolt against the flaccid academism Mr Sumner has preached."

In 1955 Dawson won Gallery Art School Prizes including the Grace Joel Scholarship (Nude), Hugh Ramsey Portrait Prize, one for an ‘Abstract Painting’, another for 'A Panel of Three Drawings from Life', a 2nd prize for a 'Head study', and the 'National Gallery Society Scholarship for best subject drawing or panel of drawings in exhibition.'

A 1955 newspaper article reports that as an art student "she concentrates mainly on semi-abstracts and enjoys working on large canvases. Murals are her particular interest" and that "her highest ambition is to win the school's travelling scholarship" of £900 for three years study abroad, then held by West Australian painter Frances Woolley (b.1930). Indeed, the following year she was the joint winner, with friend Kathleen Boyle, of the award; the National Gallery of Victoria Travelling Scholarship, that enabled her to travel to Italy. There, from late 1959 to early 1960, she took up residence in the hilltop village of Anticoli Corrado where the British School at Rome retained workspaces for artists. During her three months there, Dawson made drawings of the landscape which are held by the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the NGA. Abstraction, which she had once found disturbing, in her Italian landscape drawings appears in "sensual renderings," that ran 1957–61 at 26 rue Boulard, where she was the only woman amongst five printers, she worked printing for School of Paris artists in Paris, proof printing lithographs by artists Pierre Soulages, Fritz Hundertwasser and Kumi Sugai and others, and translated her Italian drawings into lithographs with bold colours, lines and strokes

Gallery A Returning after nearly four years to Australia in late November 1960 Rather than any of the range of fine art galleries in Melbourne, opening 18 May 1961, then was employed by the gallery with responsibilities that included collaborating with dealer Max Hutchinson and furniture designer and sculptor, Clement Meadmore on the gallery's major 1961 exhibition The Bauhaus: Aspects and Influence. Dawson also founded the Gallery A Print Workshop, In this role she introduced Australian artists including John Brack, John Olsen and Fred Williams to lithography. Among her students were Graeme Cohen, Richard Havyatt and Winston Thomas. A special September 1963 edition of Meanjin devoted to French writing featured her work on its cover and as illustrations throughout.

Working as the gallery manager and technical assistant, Dawson's abstraction developed through her adoption of acrylic paint and shaped composition boards. Related to, and influential on her art, was her design of furniture for the gallery, one item of which is in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection from her ‘Living Art’ table top series of 1964 made at the invitation of the Australian Laminex company and fabricated by Steven Davis in Melbourne. Angela Goddard describes Dawson's tables as;

Having shown prints and drawings at Gallery A, she held her first painting solo there in 1964.

Colour field painting Robert Lindsay notes that; "It was through a group of artists returning to Australia in the early and mid 1960s that the new international style became established. Janet Dawson returned in 1961, Dick Watkins in 1962, Sydney Ball from New York in 1965, and also in 1965 Tony McGillick..."

Artists from this group, including Dawson, were represented 21 August–28 September 1968 in The Field, the exhibition inaugurating the new venue of the NGV on St. Kilda Road Melbourne. Curators of the exhibition John Stringer, Exhibitions Officer, and Brian Finemore, Curator of Australian Art selected two works by Dawson. One of only three women invited, beside Wendy Paramour and Normana Wright, she showed her large-scale recent works; Wall 11, 1968–69, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 184.3 x 184.4 cm., which was soon purchased by the National Gallery of Australia in 1969; and Rollascape 2, 1968, synthetic polymer paint on an irregularly-shaped composition board, 150.0 x 275.0 cm. The latter was purchased by the Art Gallery of Ballarat with assistance of the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council, in 1988.

During the 1970s Dawson moved away from such Hard Edge abstraction to a more 'painterly' style, but maintained her formal vocabulary; at the time of her 1979 survey show Mary Eagle noted "she sees everything in nature blending, flowing together..."

Dawson was involved in the Colour Field movement; abstraction that used flat, solid and graduated hues to make colour its own subject. Art historian Bernard Smith writes that "Colour painting first began to appear rather hesitantly upon the Australian scene around 1963. Two artists are of special importance for its appearance, Dick Watkins in Sydney and Janet Dawson in Melbourne." She was among the artists exhibited in The Field at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968. The exhibition opened too much controversy, but launched the careers of many of the young artists. Dawson was one of only three women artists in the exhibition, Donald Brook, in year of The Field, reviewed a May exhibition Paintings by Janet Dawson at Gallery A, and described her approach at the time to the painting as an object;

In 1970 Brook expands on this assessment:

Mary Eagle identifies in Dawson's early painting "themes of architectural and atmospheric space and light and images of clouds, moons and rainbows" that continue into her abstract work. In an August 1977 Gallery A show she augmented such imagery, though on a macro scale, without the gum trees, with collage, as Nancy Borlase notes in her review;

Gary Catalano writing in 1988 about her solo show in Richmond, questions, then reluctantly concurs with, Eagle's comparison of Dawson's metaphysics with Blake's, and highlights the artist's surrealism:

Catalano's 1997 interview with the artist allowed Dawson to give her own response to the question of metaphysics:

"Naturalism and symbolism are fully reconcilable. Of course. you don't name styles or techniques to yourself as you work; it would be a rotten job if you did. But...the arrangement of the petals of a Fool dahlia employs the same spiral structure as a galaxy or other cosmic conglomerate. So, from that point of view there's not much difference between a dahlia and a galaxy. and there's no need to play magic realism tricks. The dahlia is under my nose, so it's more useful to study and draw. The big in the little. There has to be that interest - textural, tactile, detailed interest - to take you further. Most of the works that sing in your mind have those qualities embedded, not 'explained'." At that time she was working 1969–1971 full-time in the display department of the Australian Museum, Sydney, which she credits, because of the 'natural history' to which it exposed her, as an influence on her painting.

In 1977 they lived at 'Scribble Rock', a small property just outside the settlement, and there, from 22 December 1994 to May 1995 she produced the Scribble Rock Red Cabbage series purchased in its entirety by the National Gallery of Australia.

Boddy died in 2014 and Dawson moved to Ocean Grove, Victoria. Michael had three children, including a son who pre-deceased Boddy. 1963: Prints '63, Studio One Printmakers. Skinner Galleries (1963 – 1963); Newcastle Region Art Gallery (1 September 1963 – 1 September 1963); Castlemaine Art Gallery And Historical Museum (1 September 1963 – 1 September 1963); Rudy Komon Art Gallery (1 September 1963 – 1 September 1963); Douglas Gallery (1 September 1963 – 1 September 1963); National Gallery Of Victoria (11 September 1963 – 6 October 1963); Bonython Art Gallery, Adelaide (1 October 1963 – 1 October 1963); Yosheido Gallery, Tokyo (1964 – 1964) 1964, August: group show, Hungry Horse Gallery, Sydney 1966/7: Gallery A. Summer exhibition 66, Australian paintings drawings watercolours sculpture. Artists exhibiting were Sydney Ball, Jennifer Barwell, Henry Bastin, Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, John Brack, Donald Brook, Mike Brown, Judy Cassab, Peter Clarke, John Coburn, Martin Collocott, Jack Courier, Ray Crooke, Robert Dickerson, Russell Drysdale, Peggy Fauser, Maximilian Feuerring, John Firth-Smith, William Frater, Peter Freeman, Leonard French, Donald Friend, Marjorie Gillespie, James Gleeson, Thomas Gleghorn, Anne Hall, Pro Hart, Elaine Haxton, John Henshaw, Daryl Hill, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, Leonard Hessing, Perle Hessing, Robert Hughes, Robert Klippel, Michael Kmit, Colin Lanceley, Richard Larter, Francis Lymburner, Elwyn Lynn, Mary MacQueen, Marsha Morgan, Sydney Nolan, Alan Oldfield, John Olsen, Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski, William Peascod, John Perceval, Carl Plate, Peter Powditch, Clifton Pugh, Emanuel Raft, Stanislaus Rapotec, Charles Reddington, Stephen Reed, John Rigby, Jan Riske, William Rose, Rosemary Ryan, Gareth Sansom, Michael Shannon, Imre Szigeti, Michael Taylor, Stan De Teliga, Peter Upward, David Warren, Guy Warren, Richard Weight, Robert Williams, Les Willis, Ken Whisson, Peter Wright. Shown in both Melbourne and Sydney branches of Gallery A and continued until 24 February 1967 1968:The Field exhibition. Two paintings included amongst 74 abstract works by 40 artists working in hard edge abstraction, colour field painting, using shaped canvases, and conceptual art. National Gallery of Victoria 1979: survey exhibition, National Gallery of Victoria 1988, Feb-Mar: solo show, 312 Lennox St., Richmond 1996, 22 June–11 August: The Drawings of Janet Dawson; survey show, National Gallery of Australia 2007–2019: Group shows at Stella Downer Fine Art, Sydney 2008: Modern Times, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney 2020: Know My Name featuring 150 female Australian artists from 1900 to the 21st century, National Gallery of Australia

Awards and recognition

1956: National Gallery of Victoria Travelling Scholarship 1985: Australia Council for the Arts grant Art Gallery of New South Wales National Gallery of Australia Art Gallery of South Australia