Halley dawn’s reverence for nature is present in each of her paintings. Her portrayal of vivid, lush botanicals seems otherworldly—too beautiful to believe yet decidedly realistic. Her love of the outdoors, specifically plants and flowers, informs every painting. She gardens, travels and studies plant life as a regular part of her research, then lets the ideas flow onto canvas. She feeds her artwork by maintaining a personal garden, which includes palms and banana trees, which are some of the tropical species that define her work. She also has accumulated hundreds of reference photos along with personal research contained in her sketchbook.
“I study the movements of leaves and foliage so much that when I sit down at a canvas, I’m able to paint mostly from memory and imagination,” Dawn says. “I allow the landscapes to reveal themselves to me, which makes the process even more exciting as I watch it unfold. I’m never entirely sure what the finished piece is going to look like when I begin, but that is part of the magic.”
The magic also includes her signature touch—a final highlight of gold leaf applied boldly to the painting to draw attention to an area she feels is an important part of the artwork. The element of 24-karat gold is more than just a method of drawing attention. “Gold has always been used in religious works to convey a sense of divinity and reverence,” she says. “My work has a slightly spiritual undertone; I’m truly in awe of nature and how perfectly each part works together. I incorporate gold in my landscapes to honor the natural world in a similar way.”
Dawn floods the canvas with color, covering every inch of it. Her work has been compared to French post-impressionist painter Henri Rousseau, who’s known for the bold, dreamy and colorful application of flora and fauna in his artwork.
Unlike many artists who come upon their final path circuitously, Dawn always planned to be an artist. “It’s how I have always thought of myself,” she says. For their part, her family members completely supported her trajectory toward art, taking her to art classes when she was younger at the nearby Cleveland Institute of Art (in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio) and supporting her college enrollment at the Atlanta College of Art (now the Savannah College of Art and Design Atlanta), where she received a full scholarship and earned an undergraduate degree. Growing up in the Cleveland area, her childhood home backed up to a nature preserve, which jump-started her interest in the outdoors that later would fuel her work. “One of our family values was spending time in nature, and as an adult I’ve maintained that appreciation by spending a lot of my time gardening, hiking and just being outside as much as possible, even sketching and painting en plein air,” she explains.
Dawn’s father also supported her career in ways he could never know. When he passed away in 2018, she realized the brevity of life, which spurred her to focus her efforts full-time on making an impact through her artistry. “On his birthday later that year, I hiked solo to a local park, thinking about him. I sat down under a big-leaf magnolia tree, looked up and was suddenly inspired. I sketched the leaves, took that sketch back home and turned it into a painting. It was the first painting in this botanical series that I’ve worked on ever since. That painting still hangs above my desk today,” she says.
From that moment, she turned her passion for creating art into a full-time career and began painting consistently in her studio, sometimes 10 to 12 hours per day. “I am so drawn to painting; I can’t stay away from it. Continuing with botanicals was an obvious choice, but I wanted to do something to make the viewer feel immersed in the painting, like they might actually be standing in the location I dreamed up.” She turned to large-format canvases to allow her botanical dreamscapes to envelop viewers while the vivid colors pull them into the scene. “I’m big on the energy created by large paintings and want my art to deliver good energy to the collectors who bring them into their homes,” she says.
In each of her pieces, Dawn leans into color. “Go outside, and color is everywhere,” she explains. “Sunsets, flowers, leaves, animals—I want to honor them. It was a turning point when I realized I could paint from imagination and create my own compositions; I didn’t need to follow a photograph.” On her easel now is a 6-by-3-foot canvas of banana trees she is in the midst of painting based on some specimens growing in her backyard.
As an adult, Dawn maintains the appreciation for nature she found when she was a child. Her love of botanicals influences her travels to tropical locations that have the type of foliage she likes to capture with her paintbrush. “Visiting places such as Puerto Rico, Miami and Thailand have vastly contributed to the subject matter I paint,” she says. When traveling, she makes it a point to see as many parks and gardens as possible in each location. Some of these places she characterizes as “too beautiful to be real.” These are the places that feed her creative energies to create surreal artwork reminiscent of bold dreamscapes.
Dawn’s national and international collectors are as colorful as her artwork and many are creatives themselves. “I have connected with some of the most interesting people through my art. They are full of stories to share,” she says. “These past few years have been an exciting journey as I find my place in the art world and connect with collectors who share my values.”
Her biggest hope is that her work brings a feeling of tranquility to collectors. “I have learned that energy is contagious, so if I can brighten someone’s day with my work, that is incredibly valuable,” she says. “When I exhibit my work, people commonly walk into the booth and say, ‘I feel so good being in here!’ That is intentional.” *
