‘the beauty of human frailty’
Dawn's work is most often inspired by her lifelong love of the human condition. …what she describes as ‘the beauty of human frailty’.
Interpreting universal human form, or architectonic column-like forms, she generally works with natural materials. There is an increasing interest in her life size willow works cast into bronze for outdoor installations and sculpture gardens.
Ancestral Home
She remarried in 2007 and came to live in rural Pictou County (Nova Scotia) where, coincidentally, she was born. As her husband and she worked to restore the old house on his property to make it into a working studio, they discovered, looking at the property deed and at her father’s geneology, that the studio was built in 1838 by her great great great grandfather, Alexander James Reid.
Rural Landscape
A gentle giant of a man, her husband Merle, has brought colour into her life. Colour crept into her work tentatively at first, but the passion to layer a sheer paint on form has become a potential choice. Not every piece. And sparingly applied with fine brushes. The essential nature of the sculpture material is intact.
Working in this ancestral space, looking out to the rural landscape of the woods, so near the ocean, a sense of joy and peace layers the former seriousness of her work.
Creative Process
Learn about Dawn’s process and tour her studio
video credit Quin Lynch.
Caring
Dawn was commissioned by the IWK Children’s Hospital in 2010 to create a 12’ high sculpture to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the original Children’s Hospital in Halifax.
Love and motherhood have been themes of her work in the past, so creating this work over a year was particularly close to her heart.
The Craig Gallery
There have been a number of Solo Exhibitions of Dawn’s work at the Craig Gallery in Dartmouth since its early days. The most recent was in 2020 and was appropriately named ‘A Fortunate Adversity: COVID Version’.
CBC Documentary
Made in 1997 documenting Dawn’s art and practice
Dawn was inducted into the RCA (Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts) in 2008. She was honoured in 2005 with Doctorate of Humane Letters by Mount St. Vincent University and in 2014 with Doctorate of Laws by Mount Allison University.
As well as her exhibition and commission work, she is a longstanding member of the International Sculpture Center; CARFAC (Canadian Artist Representation); Craft Nova Scotia (formerly Nova Scotia Designer Craftsmen, Master Artisan), and Visual Arts Nova Scotia. She served as a national director on Canadian Craft Council from 1983-7.
Dawn MacNutt obtained her B.A. (Art and Psychology) in 1957 from Mount Allison University, New Brunswick. In 1970, she obtained the M.S.W., from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.