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Lawrence
Daws Recent Works Philip Bacon Galleries Brisbane Australia September 1999
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This
review was first published in The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, Australia - September
1999.
LAWRENCE DAWS is sitting, relaxed, over a coffee at Owl Creek, his 16ha
property near Beerwah, north of Brisbane. Its a pleasant winters day, but just
brisk enough for the artist to keep a watchful eye on the pot-bellied stove warming the
room in the timber house and to dissuade us from wandering out onto the inviting verandah.
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At 72, Daws (who is represented in major public collections and shows regularly in most
states) is as popular and busy as he has ever been, though he believes he has finally
reached a calm plateau in his life. ``A lot of the angst has disappeared, which, I hope is
a good thing, he says of his latest paintings. This may surprise Dawss fans, for he is best-known for creating eerily compelling pictures -- of doomed aviators, burning trains, fleeing humanity and alienated sleepwalkers. Daws has said his recurring images of anxiety and desire, isolation and disaster, arise as a way of dealing with his inner demons: things ``niggle away in the subconscious but seem to be worked out and resolved on canvas. ``Instead of going to a psychiatrist, I hammer out the images to get myself right, he once explained. The emotional core of much of Dawss work seems to lies in fundamental human experiences: the whys and wherefores of sexual attraction and repulsion; and the inability of vulnerable individuals to accept either social control or complete freedom. But, interspersed with these darker visions, he has always painted serene pictures, and it seems that currently the muse of peacefulness has the upper hand with him. Thus, his new work includes calm canvases of the lush countryside around Bangalow in northern New South Wales; an aerial view of a crowd of tiny figures on a blue and gold beach; an interior with a model; and three large paintings of Brisbanes river, office towers and glittering lights, called, City I, II and III. In painting these works, Daws says he aimed to ``capture certain moments with ``no menace, hidden agendas, or anything. Quoting the poet Philip Larkin (who once said he wrote poems ``to preserve things Ive seen, thought, felt ... which Im trying to keep from oblivion ...) Daws adds he is lately finding the pinning down of elusive experience an interesting task. Yet the melancholic or anxious element in his work is not entirely absent from the show, and is most striking in an erotically-charged new painting called Asylum in Eden II. It shows a nude woman handling a snake like a Biblical Eve, while in the background of the picture, a shadowy male figure watches. The woman is on display and is both desirable and dangerous. Dawss painting become a journey into the male psyche, where, as C G Jung once observed, the ``eternal woman is lodged deeply as an archetype of mystery, fascination and sexual attraction. In another work, Mt Beerwah, people are unnervingly absent. Painted with seemingly effortless virtuosity in scumbled and veiled layers of paint, this canvas is very beautiful indeed, yet its emptiness -- save for natures primordial elements of light, air and geological matter -- is disturbing. The feeling of unease is underscored by Dawss placement of the viewer as a lonely witness before the primeval Mt Beerwah landscape. As an image of landscape stillness it is not at all like Piero, but, still, it has its own dark beauty. Lawrence Daws, Recent Paintings, Philip Bacon Galleries, 2 Arthur St, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, Australia (until September 15) 1999. Copyright © 1999 Sue Smith. Not to be used without the permission of the author |
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