By ROBIN STANTON GERROW
BG Independent News
You would never know from the details in her work that Mary Dawson took up painting just two years ago. She was known for her ceramic sculptures, but when she moved to her current home there really wasn’t a place to do relatively messy work.
“I just didn’t want to contend with the mess of making the ceramics,” she said. “And I thought, I have this perfect little studio and it’s perfect for painting. I took a couple painting classes in college when I got my art degree, but I’ve never been a painter. But, I thought, I’ve been an artist all my life—I can be a painter.”
Dawson’s solo exhibit, “Enduring Beauty,” of both paintings and sculptures will be on display Oct. 17 to Dec. 20, 2025, at 20 North Gallery, 18 N. St. Clair St., Toledo. There will be an opening reception 6 to 9 p.m., Friday, Oct. 17, and an artist talk 2 to 5 p.m., Nov. 23.
“It was a leap of faith,” she said. “I can draw, and I have something to say. I decided I would spend a year or so and see where it took me.”
She quickly developed her photorealistic style of flora and is inspired by nature in general.
“It’s not so much that they’re flowers,” Dawson said. “It’s nature and the organic shapes, and the color. That’s really what drew me. Like my sculpture, my paintings are very organic, and they move, like nature. They’re very sensuous. But nature is like that, the way things move together and blend in. It’s a subject matter that I like, that has a lot of range to it in terms of color and movement.”
Her process begins with photos she takes herself, and then discipline in the studio.
“I take, almost exclusively, the photo myself,” Dawson said. “It has to be exactly right, the lighting and the image, everything about that particular flower. I take a number of shots and then crop them until I find what I want to paint.”
And then, the work really begins with six to seven days a week in her studio.
“I usually spend 80 hours, sometimes 100, on every painting,” she said. “Some of them have taken up to 120 hours. It’s challenging and sometimes it’s a bit difficult and slow. But it is tremendously satisfying when I finish.”
After Dawson retired from her graphic design work, she realized she needed something to do.
“You can only walk your dog and drive around in your golf cart so much,” she said. Her son, Ian Dawson, was starting to become a glass artist and she saw how much joy his art brought him.
“He was so satisfied with his work, it made me realize that I need to make art, because that’s who I really am and what I love to do.”
