Verne Dawson

Verne Dawson comes from the US south, where he still lives much of the year when he is not in New York, where he also  works and maintains a studio. With almost anthropological fervor he explores in his paintings the history of mankind and the development of human society. He is captivated by the continuing similarities between past cultures and our present-day reality, and by depicting scenes laden with mythological and fairy-tale features. In his works Dawson attempts to confront this gradual obliteration of collective memory, owing to which seemingly everyday connections are lost—for example, how the courses of the sun and moon have forever defined man’s concept of time in every part of the world—at times with slight amusement, at others in deadly earnest.

In his picture Winsor McKay, he observes the originator of the animated film as he sketches en plein air a gigantic brontosaurus at its bath, he touches on multiple levels of meaning and layers of time simultaneously. He speculates on the ability of painting (and the animated film, of course) to configure a world of its own and then present this vision, hung on a wall, as a quote from his own painting. He is fascinated by the way animation can teach a dinosaur how to walk, and moreover by all the ways, both positive and negative, such visualizations can influence our actual scientific observation. In part he is picturing himself, a painter indulging in nostalgic, sentimental contemplation of nature and mankind, and in doing so, creating a cosmos all his own.

Accordingly, Verne Dawson’s works are doors into a world that was always there and still survives, but that has been pushed aside by the manifold entanglements of modern civilization: suddenly ultramodern cities of the future pop up, above which circle steam-driven airships, embedded in bucolic landscapes that betray a painterly passion. Again and again the picture within a picture points up the unreality of a scene, while at the same time inviting the viewer to immerse himself in the depicted event.