Robin Gibson Gallery

modern + contemporary

Lawrence Daws

lawrence-daws

Lawrence Daws

Summer Rains – Owl Creek 1981 oil on board 100×150cm
$40,000 or 4 payments of $10,000


Lawrence Daws has enjoyed a long and successful career as a painter and printmaker during which he has depicted the different characteristics of the Australian landscape with a unique sensibility.

From the parched earth and olive trees of his childhood in South Australia, through the Tanami and remote deserts of the Northern Territory, or the cultivated acres of Tasmania and the tropical rainforests and strange volcanic land forms of Queensland where he has lived since 1970, Daws brings to his work a sense of foreboding mixed with an almost dreamlike tranquility.

Always present however, no matter where he locates the physical geography of his art, is another landscape – the inner landscape of the unconscious mind. This is an uneasy terrain of fears, dreams and desires, where mysterious land forms combine with tiny running figures, monstrous pythons, gigantic birds and faceless female nudes, whose nakedness threatens as much as it seduces. Drawn from many sources ranging from Freud, Jung, the Tarot and Alchemy, to Caspar David Friedrich and Piero della Francesca, his paintings contain symbols of both the collective unconscious, `the whole spiritual heritage of mankind’s evolution’, as well as that of the individual psyche. They are places of exquisite beauty seen through a thin blue veil – a state half-way between waking and nightmare – that also contain an almost unbearable tension in which we sense that something terrible is about to happen but cannot explain why.

The strange juxtapositions of landscapes, figures and forms create a personal lexicon – a kind of secret language – which when put with his technical mastery, demonstrates that Daws has lost none of his ability to tantalize and intrigue.

Dr Candice Bruce

lawrence-daws

Lawrence Daws

Yam Creek II 1962 oil & watercolour on card 31×44cm
$4,500 or 4 payments of $1,125


Lawrence Daws

1927
Born in Adelaide, South Australia Studies engineering and architecture

1948-49
Survey work with an oil company in New Guinea

1950-53
Four years at Melbourne National Art School

1957
Awarded Italian Travelling Scholarship

1958-59
Lived and worked in Rome

1960-69
Lived and worked in London Travelled extensively in Europe, Russia, India, Mexico and USA
Awarded Silver Medal, São Paulo Biennial
Awarded the Wardle Invitation Art Prize, Perth

1970
Returned to Australia and moved to Bribie Island, Queensland

1974
Moved to Owl Creek farm in the Glasshouse Mountains

1977
Awarded Georges Invitation Art Prize
Appointed member of Queensland Art Gallery Board of Trustees

1992
Received honorary doctorate from Griffith University

2000
Received honorary doctorate from University of the Sunshine Coast
Survey exhibition—‘Lawrence Daws: Asylum in Eden’, Brisbane City Gallery

2010-11
‘The Promised Land: The Art of Lawrence Daws’, Caloundra Regional Art Gallery touring to QUT Art Museum; Redcliffe City Gallery; Tweed River Art Gallery; Hervey Bay Regional Gallery; Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville; Gladstone Regional Art Gallery; S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney; and Wollongong Regional Gallery

Selected Solo Exhibitions

Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
2015, 2008, 2006, 1997, 1994, 1991, 1988, 1983, 1980

Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane
2014, 2011, 2008, 2005, 2002, 1999, 1996, 1993, 1990, 1987, 1982, 1979, 1978, 1977, 1975

Caloundra Regional Art Gallery
Touring to venues across Queensland and New South Wales
2010-2011

Festival of the Arts, Adelaide
Greenhill Galleries and Hilton Hotel
2008

Sophie Gannon Galleries, Melbourne
2007

Nevill Keating Tollemache, London
2003

Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne
2001

Sam Hill-Smith Gallery, Adelaide
2000

Brisbane City Gallery, Brisbane
2000

BMG Fine Art, Adelaide
1982, 1978, 1968, 1967, 1964, 1963, 1961

Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney
1977, 1973, 1969, 1965

Skinner Galleries, Perth
1973, 1967, 1965, 1962, 1961

Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane
1972, 1969, 1968, 1966, 1963, 1957, 1956

Matthieson Gallery, London
1962

La Salita Gallery, Rome
1959

Australian Galleries, Melbourne and Sydney
1959

Public collections

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin
Australian National University, Canberra
University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane
Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
Bendigo Art Gallery
Brisbane Supreme Court
Broken Hill City Art Gallery
Cairns Regional Gallery
Mildura Arts Centre
Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery
New England Regional Art Museum
Newcastle Region Art Gallery
Parliament House, Canberra
Tweed River Art Gallery
Wollongong City Gallery
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Auckland
National Gallery of China, Beijing
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Tate Gallery, London
The Royal Society, London
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Yale University, New Haven
Shanghai Art Gallery, Shanghai
Musée des Beaux-arts de L’Ontario, Toronto
And other public and private collections



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