Dawson Murray: Fife-based artist and printmaker dies aged 78

Artist and print maker Dawson Murray, who spent nearly 30 years living and working in north Fife, has died aged 78.

Dawson, together with his artist wife Liz, retired to Fife in 1995 following a career in education, after he developed Multiple Sclerosis.

Known initially for his painting, Dawson’s final major project was a collaboration with George Wyllie on a 48-foot-high, six-panel artwork in Glasgow’s Buchanan Galleries.

Etching

As his condition developed, Dawson moved into etching, even creating his own technique of using straw-hat varnish to get a watercolour effect.

He later worked with assistants in his studio to create etchings on plates which were printed at Dundee Contemporary Arts.

Over the years, Dawson had worked closely with artist Richard Demarco and was a director of the Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh.

Dawson was born in Springburn, Glasgow, in 1944, the son of Dawson Murray, who worked in locomotive engineering, and his wife, Ella, who worked in a munitions factory.

He went to Albert Secondary School in Glasgow before studying at Glasgow School of Art from 1961 to 1966.

Dawson met Liz in Glasgow in 1965. She had studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and was teaching in Paisley at the time.

In 1966, Dawson was awarded a travelling scholarship and spent two years in Italy studying under Giuseppe Santamaso in Venice and later in Sicily where his painting reflected the heat and fertility of the coast.

Dawson and Liz married in Palermo in 1967, returned to Scotland in 1968 when Dawson began teaching in the east end of Glasgow and Dunbartonshire before being asked to establish the new art department at Boclair Academy in Bearsden in 1977.

Throughout this time he was a leading member of the Glasgow Group, set up to encourage young artists.

Dawson was also an associate member of of the Royal Society of Painters and Printmakers.

After Dawson and Liz moved to Fife, he devoted time and energy creating a vibrant garden which featured in many of his works.

You can read the family’s announcement here.