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Shirley Dawson, photographer and digital artist, lives in White Hall, Arkansas with her husband and two canine friends. She uses her computer along with natural media software and her Wacom tablet and pen to create art from her photographs; combining her knowledge of modern technology and the techniques of the masters to create her unique art style.

"Art by Shirley" is the fruition of a childhood dream.  Shirley Dawson was born into a family of modest means in the deep south of the Central Arkansas delta.  Her love of drawing and art began early and after a failed attempt to win a scholarship to a prestigious art school, consoled herself with drawing and then painting with acrylics on canvas and board.  In her twenties, she became enamored with photography and  purchased her first Canon (an AE-1) which she used until it fell apart in her hands; and then the digital revolution seized her attention and she purchased her first digital camera - A Sony Mavica.  Exploring new and more modern models, she return to her Canon roots and the EOS SLR cameras and settled  into that line of equipment. 

A career as a civil servant with the FDA opened doors and provided training in the information technology field and also fostered a love of software programs, especially graphic programs, leading to her interest in graphic design and digital image creation.  Today, Shirley combines her love of art, photography & graphical software to merge the techniques of the old Masters that she studies, with modern natural media software which allows her to "paint" with her Wacom table and pressure sensitive pen.  Each finished art piece is hand embellished with brush strokes and acrylic paints.

Shirley's "digital impression paintings" are her interpretation of what she sees in the natural world or captures with her high tech camera equipment.  A love of nature, close observation of her human subjects and her studies of the techniques of the "Old Masters" help her depict scenes and subjects in a unique impressionistic way.   She describes her painting process this way:

"In creating my paintings, I typically start with a digital photo.  Using my graphics tablet, natural media software and digital pen I hand brush away all of the digital pixels in the image, replacing them with enhanced colors and unique brush like strokes, removing distracting backgrounds and objects and adding new details to the subject. 

My natural media software allows me to pick different brush and media types to emulate in my painted strokes.  This is not a simple "push button" effect, but a painstaking, even tedious stroke by stroke process to create a unique impressionistic painted appearance. 

The finished painting is printed on fine art paper or canvas using rich, archival pigments and modern large-format giclee art printers.  The art print is sealed with special sealants and coatings and then hand brushed and embellished with either traditional acyrlicas or water soluble oil paints for an even more traditional painted appearance, making the art piece a "one of a kind" work.  After the acrylic or oil paint embellishments are dry (approximately a 3-week process for oils) a final coating or more of sealant is applied.  Once dried, the finished painting is ready for framing."  The entire process may take several weeks depending on the subject and type of finish."

Shirley is a member of the Professional Photographers of America, the Central Arkansas Outdoor Photographers Club, the Pine Bluff Art League and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Shirley has received various awards at competitions and had her work accepted into various exhibits