By Penny Creasy
As I dialed Doug Dawson’s number and shortly I heard, “Hello, Penny.” It was easy to imagine we were sitting at my kitchen table, sunshine streaming through the window and having a cup. Actually, we had 350 miles and Rocky Mountains between us. I had asked him earlier for a statement about his career accomplishments. He laughed when I told him his accomplishments were so extensive we wouldn’t have room for the interview. We agreed to a shorter a version and began our conversation.
Penny Creasy (PC): Most artists I visit with give me “the reason.” Would you tell me what drew you to creating art?
Doug Dawson (DD): At an early age I knew I had good eye-hand co-ordination. I could draw people and it would look like them. Somewhere along the way I set art aside. Science had always interested me. Art wasn’t academic. So I went to Drake University to be a biology science teacher. I was a 3rd year graduate assistant, teaching at a college level. I took a job teaching in Denver. One day I saw an art demo and as I watched the process, I realized that was what I wanted to do with my life.
PC: You were a young guy, married for 4 years and getting a career started in teaching in Denver. How did that work out?
DD: Sue and I talked it over and she supported me in that choice.
PC: You walked away from teaching science and began working in watercolor. When I asked you what drew you to pastel you talked about it being a “calculated decision.” Tell me more.
DD: I discovered in working in watercolor there wasn’t an easy transference of knowledge to other mediums. Watercolor is so different. As a young married guy, I realized competition in oil would be difficult due to the number of oil painters. I discovered only Albert Handell and Daniel Green and a few others were successful pastellists at the time.
PC: In your book, “Capturing Light and Color with Pastel,” published in 1991, you comment, “Pastel is best medium for learning about color.” Would you enlarge on the “why” of that?
DD: You can’t mix pastel on a palette. It forces you to mix by layering colors on the painting’s surface. In the process you make discoveries.
PC: “Making discoveries” sounds like how a scientist would think. You have been teaching workshops for a long time. In our conversation you estimated 45 years. In writing your book, was it a challenge to put into words what you do and how you do it?
DD: You know, I think teaching the workshops were a rehearsal for the book. The book describes the principles I teach.
PC: I understand you work mostly in the evenings. To quote you, “I do all those things everybody does during the day. Fixing things, buying supplies and observing.” As we discussed art, you commented you were observing some birds outside your window. As an artist, “seeing” is part of the job isn’t it? Do you use your computer in ways to assist what you do?
DD: I take a lot of landscape photos. I use the computer to crop the photo to get a pleasing composition, always looking for big shapes.
PC: That reminds me of our trip to Fruita along the base of the beautiful Colorado National Monument in evening light. You snapped a lot of photos and never asked me to stop once. No “art pauses” as Jim, my husband, called them.
PC: I was looking through your long list of accomplishments. I’d like to go back to your long list. I noticed seven countries listed for different reasons. One in particular caught my eye. You had a piece chosen to be in the office of the Ambassador to Madagascar.That is a nice honor and I was wondering about that. I was also wondering about your involvement with World Relief. It seems you have used your art to “pay ahead” as it is said.
DD: I went to Mali, North Africa, for World Relief. Back in 1985 there was famine in Africa. People were starving. I contacted Work Relief with an idea. My idea was simple, I would paint people in Mali and World Relief could use the images to promote fund raising. World Relief chose one of the paintings and placed it in Senator William Armstrong of Colorado’s office. Years later I went to Suriname in South Africa to work on a different project. There I worked with the Summer Institute of Linguistics which is the name of Wycliffe Bible Translators outside of the U.S. I called Wycliffe and suggested that local people might be responsive if the illustrators in the Bibles reflected the local culture. At the request of the Suriname government I gave a workshop for local artists. I ended up designing a survey to test different styles of illustration and different fonts. Several years later the Ventana Gallery, my gallery in Santa Fe, was asked if they could provide one of my African paintings for the office of the Ambassador to Madagascar. I assume this came about because of my work with World Relief.
PC: I was just thinking that in the beginning you chose a career in teaching. Your muse kept calling you to art. You have managed to use your artistic talent to allow you to teach something you love. I think that is a fine legacy. I have read several articles about you in different magazines. One comes to mind about your use of an easel in your studio. I thought it was a clever idea. Feel like remembering?
DD: The easel you refer to is only used to photograph my art. It is mounted on the wall. There are two spot lights that are always set up at the same distance from the wall easel. This setup allows me to photograph my paintings under predictable repeatable lighting conditions. So, I always get good results.
PC: I think my next question is something close to your heart. When we first visited about it, you mentioned that everyone involved with the Art Students League hoped it would last at least a year. It presently has lasted over 30 years. You mentioned Carol Katchen, a fine artist in her own right, also worked on this. You both are founding members, and you are still teaching there. I loved the reason it came into being.
DD: Carol and I often talk about the marketing of our art. She knew I was critical of the art instruction in colleges and universities. The prevailing academic attitude then seemed to be that to teach art principles would destroy creativity. I combined that with the observation few artists really shared the dominant academic belief that the goal of the artist was to do something which had never been done before, regardless of whether it was worth doing or not. I think some things don’t need to be done. It seemed like a reasonable remedy might be to start an art school after the pattern of the Art Students League in New York City. Students would learn by working with master working artists. Since I knew the art community, my primary contribution was to recommend artists who might teach. The sole criteria for teaching would be a master of art, not a college degree.
Carol apparently had similar conversations with some other people. One of them was Henry Meinenger, owner of Meinenger’s Art Supplies. Several of the folks she knew had grant writing experience. One was an attorney. The school really owes its beginning to Henry Meininger who donated a lot of art supplies and to all the folks who had fund raising and grant writing experience. These are the people that made the school possible. Carol’s contribution was to get us all talking together. That was the beginning.
PC: From a small seed a very large tree can grow. When I hear you talk about your art, your ideas about discovering and the Art Students League, I hear excitement, and the scientist. Through our conversations I have heard about making discoveries and learning the “why” of what you do. I recently watched a documentary about Leonardo DaVinci. His whole being seemed to be centered on finding out the what and why. He needed answers to all that interested him. I think that might be you also, Doug. Thank you so much for spending time with me.
