John D. Dawson

According to his family, John D. Dawson was drawing at the age of three. Dawson himself can’t recall a time when he didn’t know that art would be his life, and although his love of the outdoors took longer to develop, both art and nature quickly became integral parts of his work.

A 1959 graduate of the Art Center School in Los Angeles, CA, Dawson first worked as an illustrator at an advertising agency in San Diego. In the mid-1970s he moved to the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho where he continued his freelance illustrator career. Although he experienced some tough early years there, he established himself as a natural history artist. A frequent visitor to the Hawaiian Islands, it was on an assignment to Hawaii that Dawson decided to trade the Rockies for tropical rain forests. In 1989, he and his wife, Kathleen, moved to Hawaii.

Dawson has painted animals and birds for articles, posters, nature guides, first-class postage stamps, and zoo signs. What they all have in common is Dawson’s meticulous attention to detail. Relying on extensive research, specimen studies, interviews with experts, and his numerous personal files of recorded field observations, debris, and field sketches, Dawson spends long days at the drawing board getting every detail correct.

His clients include the National Geographic Society, the National Audubon Society, Chevron, Reader’s Digest Books, the National Park Service, the National Wildlife Federation, Ranger Rick, Field & Stream, and the American Museum of Natural History. His designs for the Postal Service include all of the issuances in the Nature of America series.