Verne Dawson (American, b.1961) was born in Meridianville, AL, in 1961. Dawson studied at the Art Student’s League of New York in 1976, and then went on to Cooper Union in 1980. His first solo exhibition was in 1985 at the Portrait Studio in New York.

Dawson’s work explores broad human themes such as spirituality, mortality, and our place in the universe. In his 2001 exhibition, May Day, at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Dawson exhibited a series of five paintings, including Solstice Procession in the Magdelenian Era and When Santa Was a Shaman, all with the subtitle Cycle of quarter-days observances, circa 23800 B.C. He has shown his work in America multiple times at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, and in Europe at Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin and Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

Dawson was also in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, in which he exhibited Pagans. In 2011, he exhibited a four-part mural, Old Mill Calendar, at the Eva Presenhuber Gallery in Zurich, Switzerland. The piece explores the cycles present in our world: day and night, light and dark, life and death. The piece was also shown at the Yokohama Triennial in 2011. Dawson lives and works in New York.