artists
Dawnne McGeachy
Dawnne McGeachy is a multi-award-winning artist originally from Campbeltown in Argyll, Scotland, and now based in Helensburgh.
A graduate of Glasgow School of Art and the University of Ohio, Dawnne's dramatic paintings of the sea are inspired by her father's career as a fisherman on the west coast of Scotland and the effect this had on her as she grew up in a fishing community.
After achieving a special admission to the Glasgow School of Art, Dawnne graduated with 1st Class Honours with Distinction before being Highly Commended when undertaking her Post Graduate Diploma. She then won a scholarship to America to take a Master of Fine Art at the University of Ohio in Columbus where, in 1992, she graduated Phi Kappa Phi, in the top 7% of all Masters students in the US.
Dawnne gained renewed recognition in 2013 by winning Scotlands's biggest art prize, the Jolomo Bank of Scotland Award for landscape painting. Since then she has exhibited regularly throughout Scotland.
In September 2015, a painting was commissioned through the office of Scotland’s First Minister, with the work hanging in St Andrew’s House. The First Minister noted, “Dawnne is a great example of a talented Scottish artist who has been inspired by the dramatic coast lines that surround the peninsula of Kintyre. As a child of a fisherman and growing up by the sea, Dawnne really brings to life the true nature and scale of the ocean.”
Dawnne has been shortlisted for The Spectrum Art Prize 2017.
Professor Stuart MacKenzie OBE (Glasgow School of Art) noted, “Dawnne McGeachy’s paintings of the sea are no mere phenomenology. These intricately laboured and layered images are the result of a process that combines the ingredients of research and observation, skill and craftsmanship with intelligent feeling. This magical alliance results in a painterly aesthetic capable of meeting the two extremes experienced by the artist - the ocean’s endless romance and the geometry of something apparently shapeless. McGeachy thus gives form to the formless and meaning to the ephemeral.”
This Artist at Doubtfire
2nd December 2017 - 3rd February 2018