Ann Dawkins
It takes a lot of skill to create vibrant, juicy citrus with paint, and even more to make rotting produce look good! We love the saturated hues and fleshy textures in the work of Kentucky based oil painter, Ann Dawkins. If you, like us, need more of her fruity and fleshy creations in your life, keep reading!
Based in Louisville, Kentucky, Dawkins received her BFA in Painting from the University of Louisville in 2013 and her MFA in Painting from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2019. She recently spent two years as an Instructor of Drawing and Painting at Oklahoma State University. Working with different mediums, drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation, she crafts scenes using a classic still life subject, fruit, in metaphor with the human body, using thick paint to describe the visceral and fleshy qualities of fruit as a representation of the transient and uncontrollable physicality of the human body. Dawkins accomplishments include a grant from the Windgate Charitable Foundation in 2018 and as the recipient of an Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women in 2015. She has an upcoming solo exhibition, Fruitful Endeavors, at the Armstrong Gallery in Bloomington IL.
She explains:
My work is a visual investigation of the disconnection one can feel with their body. As a human, it can often feel that your body is an external object that is not within your control; that your physical being is prison or an enemy that is unpredictable, vulnerable, and susceptible to outside forces of evil, deception, and disease. Rotten fruit has become a deliberate metaphor for me through linguistic research. To rot can, by definition, mean all manner of corruption. Fruit is often used in connection, spanning back to biblical times, with women, their sins, and sexuality, as well as their ability to produce life. The term fleshy is used only to describe fruit and the human body, often women’s bodies, which are deemed “soft and thick” just like the tissue of a fruit.
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