Janet Dawson

In 1959 Janet Dawson won the lithography prize at the Slade School
of Fine Arts, London University. She had enrolled there in 1956 at the age of 21 after winning the National Gallery of Victoria Travelling Scholarship. The brashness of the contemporary art scene in London was in direct contrast to Dawson's traditional art school background. Overwhelmed, she opted to learn lithography, and her love of drawing meant there was an instant empathy with this gentle graphic medium.

The lithography prize included a small scholarship which enabled Dawson to travel to Italy, where for some months she lived and worked in Anticoli Corrada, a mountain village near Rome. Abstract art, which had originally unsettled her, now permutated her drawings.

The Italian landscape was rendered with broad strokes; waves, marks and symbols filled the paper. Conventional depictions of hills and valleys were transformed into sensual lines and motifs.

Dawson moved to Paris where she worked at the Atelier Patris, a lithography studio. Here her Italian drawings were translated into a series of poetic lithographs.

At the end of 1960 Dawson returned to Melbourne. She established
the Gallery A Print Workshop where she assisted Fred Williams,
John Brack, John Olsen and Roger Kemp, amongst others, in their first encounters with lithography.

Montant
1960 Atelier Patris, Paris
lithograph, printed in colour on paper

Purchased 1989

Courtesy of the artist
and copyright holder

Reve du soleil
1960 Atelier Patris, Paris
lithograph, printed in colour on paper

Purchased 1976

Courtesy of the artist
and copyright holder

Purchased 1966

Purchased 1966

Purchased 1972