Dawson’s latest offering may be his best effort to date

Craig Bakay | Nov 17, 2021

Clarendon Station’s Dave Dawson is “coming up on 89” but although he may not be moving quite as fast as he once did, his artistic output hasn’t slowed down in the slightest. He’s completed 10 books (The Girls with the Raven Black Hair being the latest) with an 11th (A Cowboy’s Christmas Morning) well on the way. Six of his books are poetry, three are short stories and one is a novelette.

He's recorded 10 CDs (118 songs) with Adieus to the Blues being the latest and again, there’s another on the way.

“I do a lot of writing in the old schoolhouse in Clarendon,” he said. “It’s quiet there but the ATVs do roar by from time to time.

“But I just get used to it.”

He also paints and draws. And that pursuit has led to what might be his finest work yet — A Book of Wilderness Art. It’s essentially a compilation picture book of his paintings and drawings and at 509 pages, it will hold down any coffee table out there.

The sheer volume of artworks presented in the book is impressive enough, but to see them all together gives the viewer an opportunity to access his visual vision as a body of work, rather than just seeing a few paintings here and there.

By the way, he dedicated the book to his friends and colleagues in the Rideau Lakes Artists Association writing: “When I’m at my easel, I’m able to shut out the world and live in what is referred to as ‘The Great Eternal Now’.”

An interesting turn of phrase, that, for the Great Eternal Now would seem to form a major aspect of Dawson’s visual work.

Anyone who’s conversed with Dawson at any length knows his fondness for séance and his ‘conversations’ with Mackenzie King. However, if you only know Dawson’s paintings, you may think of him as yet another student of the Group of Seven, dutifully depicting the great Canadian landscape.

However, as this book adeptly illustrates, there is a lot more to Dawson’s painting that meets the eye.

Even the paintings that on the surface are strictly landscapes are done with a very atmospheric feel. Some might say there is almost always a coming storm just over the horizon. However, others might say the atmosphere is generated on another plane, another dimension, another world.

Dreamcatchers form a recurring theme, and serve to reinforce a mystical element in the works. Flocks of birds, usually geese, show up quite often, but are they really birds.

Works like Asteroid With Stump (page 65) and Single Feather in Storm Cloud (page 125) hint at a narrative not of this earth. It’s a narrative that’s reinforced in a section called ‘Spirit Art,’ a collection of black/white/grey images, primarily faces, that hint at his encounters during séance journeys.

The book finishes up with a number of pen and ink drawings, serving as a grounding experience after Dawson’s use of atmosphere and colour in the previous pages.

The initial print run of A Book of Wilderness Art sold out but another run is planned. Anyone interested in obtaining any of Dawson’s work can make contact by calling 613-279-2280.