Dawn Wilson

Dawn Wilson’s drawings of night life and street life in Kinshasa and Bamako were selected for New Contemporaries 2022 with exhibitions at Humber Street Gallery, Hull and South London Gallery. She is committed to monochrome and uses graphite, charcoal dust applied with a brush, white pencil, and an eraser. Compositions of impeccably dressed subjects are drawn from black and white photographs of street life and photographic studios of Bamako and Kinshasa.

‘I make portraits of people and places, at church, on the street and in nightclubs. People in Jamaica, in Mali and Congo-Kinshasa. They are about the colour and shape of the face, about bodies moving together and being still. I look at African and Caribbean men’s and women’s fashion, the hair, the face, patterns and the line of the clothes. Fashion and style is important to me, what I wear and looking at what other people wear. It’s about the new, about colour and matching and getting the perfect shape.’ Dawn Wilson 2022