DAWS, LAWRENCE (1927-)

"Death Of The Tribe (No.28)" (c.1960-65) 
oil on board
cm
signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Daws is a legendary Australian Mid Century Painter. He studied engineering & architecture at the School of Mines, Adelaide, attended the National Gallery School, Melbourne 1949-53 & between 1957-60 travelled & studied in Italy. He came to public attention as a member of Group 4 with fellow artists, Donald Laycock, Clifton Pugh and John Howley, exhibiting at the VAS Gallery in Melbourne in 1954. In the late 1950s and early '60s, Daws painted a series of paintings based on the ancient spiritual symbol of the Mandala. Daws had yet to read Jung and developed the works instead from an epiphanic moment he experienced while camping one night in the Tanami desert. 'Such things', wrote Sigmund Freud, 'cannot be thought up but must grow again from the forgotten depths'. The Mandala paintings are Daws at his most spiritual and form a bridge to his most recent work. In 1970 Lawrence and his partner and later wife, the artist Edit Richards, moved from Adelaide to live on Bribie Island, off the Queensland coast near Caloundra. Right from the beginning the Glasshouse Mountains held him enthralled.  Paradoxically, Daws turned inwards, to his own psyche, to express himself. Paradoxically, too, he tapped into the dark side of humanity so that all his canvases, whether they be of an interior scene or an external landscape carry the Daws' trademark expression of the enigmatic. Daws is well-versed in Taoism, the I Ching and the Tarot. The world of the collective unconscious, of archetypal dreams and fantasies not reliant on personal experience, of synchronicity, of the 'uncanny', inspire his works and are suitable companions to Daws' equally complex art works, many of which almost defy a simple interpretation. His work is represented in all Major National Galleries and Important Institutions!! This fascinating, petite oil painting was part of a series of 'Mandala' paintings completed in the early 1960s, inspired by his time in India & Eastern Philosophy.