From early success with traditional watercolour, I side-stepped inwards to a landscape rather messy, a destination known but vacated. On paper this took shape with collage, gouache, pastel, and varnish bringing out words, emotion, error, and grace from watery placid faces – a topography that engages instinct over intellect. Our personal geographies are maps that can be traveled or not, peered at or folded away, souvenir laden or forgotten. Making art is a navigational process – in the doing of it we find our route away, or toward, our self.

“One evening you will exit the ward and group-walk to the famous ice cream kiosk, travelling through the big-name cities of the inner-city streets: Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, Winnipeg. On arrival, you will merge into the east and west line-ups, both heading toward a small window from which 40 flavours of twisted soft cold appear again and again. Standing at this aperture of choice, in the central meander of a neighbourhood stroll, a pinhole breaks open in which you observe the scene upside down and reversed. The surrounding obscura of your dark mood brings into focus a bundle of rays you had previously thrown into a void without the surface of self being able to hold and reflect.”  

(Excerpt from Summer Science, Dawn Pearcey 2017)

Dawn Pearcey CV 2019 (a PDF file)