Sean Dawson
'Untitled'

Oil on canvas
222 cm diameter

Sean Dawson was born in London in 1964. He studied at Central St. Martins School of Art 1990-93 and the Royal College of Art 1993-95. While at the Royal College he showed in numerous group exhibitions in London; his first one-person exhibition was 'Apopalyptics' 152c Brick Lane London 1998. In 2001 he received a LAB Individual Artists Award and held his second one-person show, at Alfred Camp Gallery London.

"My recent paintings contain a condensing of imagery that I have assembled, sampled and distorted, which often incorporates kaleidoscopic characteristics falling somewhere between the symbolic and the pictorial. I use photo images and free-form drawing, and these interact to varying degrees in a kind of translation which morphologically trips through Rorschach's inkblots, Grimms' tales and Alice's wonderland. The circular format expands spatially my preference for curvilinear form over rectilinear, with the all-over nature of the painting uninhibited by rigid space. Formally I prioritise complexity over simplicity, pattern over form, repetition over composition and the fractural and chaotic over order. Fracture is implicit in the work and recodes the flow of imagery in a way that relates to digital visual technology and its flat illusionistic character. This flatness colours my interest in the surface of the painting and how this can create an altered visual reality, with image and form floating in an illusory plane and space."