David Dawson
Talk Art
Russell Tovey and Robert Diament c/o Independent Talent
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Robert meets painter David Dawson to discuss his new large scale landscape paintings, part of an ongoing body of work created en plein air in the artist's county of Montgomeryshire, Mid Wales.
From April 25 – October 11, ‘Land, Sky, Light’ is a solo exhibition at Gainsborough’s House featuring fifteen of David Dawson’s (b. 1960) recent large-scale paintings of his native Welsh countryside.
Having left Wales for London where he was a student at the Chelsea School of Art and later becoming a model and assistant to Lucian Freud, these paintings represent an artist returning to their childhood home to explore the nature and solitude of its surroundings.
The canvases possess a deeply autobiographical nature, being representative of Dawson's formative childhood years in the country side, and his continued experiences of solitude and connection.
Initially painted outdoors during each season of the year, the artist continues to work on them in his London studio to then complete them back in the countryside. About this creative process, which can take years, the artist states:
“Painting to me is about the reality of being in the land and making marks that correlate to me reacting to that experience. You paint what you think you know. When I’m in the land, I always get surprised by what I see, even if I thought I knew the landscape in which I grew up so well. That’s why I need to be there, en plein air. Painting to me is very much about being in the presence of the land”.
Forcing the artist to be alone in the fields, exposed to the elements, Dawson’s canvases are deeply autobiographical as they connect him to his formative years growing up in the countryside, when the artist learned about solitude.
Dawson describes his practice in almost meditative terms: painting the Welsh landscape and its waterfalls, “being in the presence of the land”, becomes a way of getting rid of his ego, to reach a feeling of connection and communion with nature.
Follow @DavidEliDawson and @GainsboroughsHouse
David is represented by @GalleriaLorcanONeill
Visit the exhibition: https://gainsborough.org/event/land-sky-light-new-landscapes-by-david-dawson/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, wherever you are in the world. I'm Robert |
| 0:07.3 | Diamant and you're listening to Talk Art. Welcome to Talk Art. Today, I am in London and I'm in the |
| 0:16.2 | studio of a dear friend and actually a previous guest of Talk Art. We did previously discuss another side of his life, which was working with the artist Lucian Freud, |
| 0:25.0 | and you can go back in the archive and hear that wonderful episode, which I think we recorded |
| 0:29.5 | at the Royal Academy of Arts. |
| 0:31.3 | But today, we are here to talk about our guest's own work. |
| 0:35.3 | He's been painting for, I think, four decades now. Yeah, and we are here |
| 0:39.7 | to celebrate nature in a very simple way, I think, is a good way of kind of describing it, |
| 0:45.9 | because I think nature is such a central part of today's guest's work. And when I was thinking |
| 0:50.5 | about how I was feeling today, I was thinking about solitude and being present in |
| 0:56.0 | nature, but also just in the act of painting. I think there's something really unique about painting, |
| 1:01.5 | which is, you know, when you're in front of a blank canvas, the way an artist has to be quite |
| 1:06.3 | present and at one with themselves, with the paint, and maybe with the subject matter. And the reason it's so |
| 1:12.6 | interesting that I really want to explore today is this idea of Plan Air painting. And our guest has |
| 1:18.1 | spent a lot of time obviously growing up in Wales, but actually makes paintings in Wales in nature. |
| 1:24.4 | And I'm really excited to find out why that is so important in terms of the mark |
| 1:28.7 | making that comes out of that. And there's going to be a wonderful exhibition opening at the |
| 1:33.4 | end of April at Gainsborough House, responding to Constable. And there's a number of artists who are |
| 1:39.9 | going to be showing their work, including today's guest. So it's a really good opportunity |
| 1:43.4 | to see his work in the UK. He has had recent exhibitions at Lorcan O'Neill's Gallery in Rome as well, |
| 1:48.7 | so some of you might have seen that in 2024. But I'm really excited to see these new paintings, |
| 1:53.4 | which I'm actually sat right in front of now with the wonderful painter himself. So I would like to |
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