Janet Dawson (*1935 in Sydney) is one of Australia's most important artists. In her more than six decades of creative work, she repeatedly explored the varieties of painting in her own way and enriched the country's art scene. As a student in her early 20s, she made a name for herself with her extraordinary semi-abstract paintings and won several prizes. A travel scholarship took her to Europe from 1957 to 1960, where she lived mainly in London and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art. Here she was particularly fascinated by color field painting, with which she caused a sensation in Australia in the 1960s. At the same time, she inspired the public with her realistic works and won the Archibald Prize in 1973, the most important award for portrait painting in Australia. Janet Dawson: Far Away, So Close is the first major retrospective of the artist's work at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, highlighting the creative diversity of her oeuvre. The exhibition runs from July 19, 2025 to January 18, 2026 in Sydney.
In 1977, Dawson was awarded the MBE for her contribution to art. She lived in seclusion with her husband near Canberra from the 1970s. Here she continued to develop her realist approach over the following decades, focusing on everyday objects and natural environments. Her cloud paintings in particular, which Dawson has been interested in since her childhood, are well-known works from her late work, in which she combines metaphysical and documentary views. Her most important solo exhibitions to date include The drawings of Janet Dawson, which was shown at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra in 1996.
