Artist:

Edwin Lawson, born San Francisco, CA 1911-died San Francisco, CA 1980  Search this

Medium:

colored pencil and graphite on paper

Dimensions:

sheet and image: 23 5/8 in. × 18 in. (60.0 × 45.7 cm)

Type:

Drawing

Folk Art

Date:

1973

Exhibition Label:

Little is known about Edwin Lawson, but his images invite questions about the stories that live within artworks after an artist is gone. Lawson’s widow found a cache of artworks showing a masculine-looking figure presented in glamorous feminine attire, hairstyles, and makeup. Despite the difference between her husband’s everyday appearance and that shown in the drawings, she understood them to be self-portraits. Lawson’s self-reimaginings present a moment in which empathy becomes an imaginative act, a foray into the soul-searching of a person whose physical body and interior identity remained at odds in a society that stigmatized and punished alternative gender identities.

(We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection, 2022)

Topic:

Figure female\full length  Search this

Dress\historic\fifties dress  Search this

Credit Line:

Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Margaret Z. Robson Collection, Gift of John E. and Douglas O. Robson

Object number:

2016.38.37

Restrictions & Rights:

Usage conditions apply

See more items in:

Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection

Department:

Graphic Arts

Data Source:

Smithsonian American Art Museum

GUID:

http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/vk7615bcdd6-fa36-4ac0-a935-d87c094a2a45

EDAN-URL:

edanmdm:saam_2016.38.37