People often ask Bill Dawson what sort of artist he is. He doesn’t know, but he’s a completely unreconstructed one. At an early age he was fascinated by the work of Georgia O’Keefe and Frida Kahlo, and started oil painting. When he was young, winters were spent in Mexico and he asked if he could go and visit the artists. In the Sonora Desert it looked as if Burnt Ranch could have been just over the next sandstone hill, and Frida did live in Mexico. He was given a firm “no” but came back to their work in college, going to visit favorite paintings in museums.
Dawson is not so much interested in whether a piece of art is representational or metaphorical, realistic or abstracted; rather he looks for an underlying creative honesty. It is an underlying honesty of expression that Bill seeks to make the foundation of all his efforts: in artwork and in life. He tries neither to force his subject, nor his materials, and feels that he speaks most truly when he lets the work speak through him.