Patricia Dawson
Patricia Dawson would have been 100 on January 23rd. In her heyday as a printmaker, her work was frequently selected and hung at the Royal Academy summer exhibition; she had one-person shows at St John’s, Smith Square (1971) and the Alchemy Gallery (1998); in 2014, there was a memorial exhibition in the gallery at Foyle’s bookshop – the last to be held in their old premises in Charing Cross Road. There are examples of Patricia’s work in the collections of the British Museum and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Patricia’s training as a textile designer at Croydon School of Art can be felt as informing several of her etchings. There is also a recognisably Japanese feel in some of her best work, reflecting her love of the likes of Hiroshige.
Two important projects were her prints illustrating episodes and characters from the novels of John Cowper Powys, the epitome of the ‘cult’ author, with whose work she had a strong affinity.
Having sold her two presses in 1994, Patricia turned to pastels, sculpture and – most intriguingly – painted papier-maché reliefs. Until the last weeks of her life, she was working on her entry for a competition to make a public sculpture for London, inspired by William Blake, whose visions had always enthralled her.