OFF the WALL
Little Harbour artist Dawn MacNutt on creating, intuition and doing something a little wild and crazy BY JANET WHITMAN PHOTOS BY STEVE SMITH, VISIONFIRE STUDIOS
While music was de rigueur growing up in New Glasgow in the 1940s, Dawn MacNutt was drawn to art. At 12 or 13, she sold Christmas cards doorto-door to pay for lessons. “There wasn’t anything in school beyond grade one or two, but I was determined,” the now internationally celebrated artist and sculptor recalls from her home in Little Harbour. “Mom was alone and teaching, so I knew if I wanted art lessons, I’d better do something about it.” MacNutt never imagined making a living as an artist. At Mount Allison University in the 1950s, she majored in psychology with a minor in fine art. She got early encouragement from famed Maritime painter Alex Colville, who was teaching at the school, and wondered why she wasn’t enrolled in the fine arts program full time after seeing her work in the studio. “I didn’t have the confidence,” says MacNutt. “I was young when I went there.” Art was a part-time endeavour for the first half of her adult life. From the 1970s through the mid-1990s, her job was three-pronged. She was a mother raising three children, working full time as a social worker and evolving as a weaver and sculptor. Her first big commission was for the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in the late 1970s, an era when the federal government supported art in public buildings. She wove the 4x3-metre piece,
The beau
The North Shore
ah! Summer 2021 - 16
