Carol Dawson Portfolio Box

Meditations on Newton (1643-1727), 2025, SOLD

"The work achieved by Sir Isaac Newton has always fascinated me. How could one individual accomplish so much discovery, and synthesize facts and connections between disparate ideas across such a wide field? The unification of physics; the law of universal gravitation; the scientific method; the invention of the first reflecting telescope; the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound; the math behind the laws of planetary motion. The list goes on and on. My favorite theme here is his analysis of light and color refraction that, contrary to prior beliefs, proved white light contains all colors and black is the absence of color—the foundational basis which established all future understanding and research on how we humans visually perceive everything around us: the very nature of color and form defined by light. To quote one of his English biographers: “…coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects…regardless of whether reflected, scattered, or transmitted, the light remains the same colour. Thus, he observed that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured light rather than objects generating the colour themselves.” In other words, Newton demonstrated that color is the physical gift of the object to the observer. I love finding perfect examples of this gift expressed in the organic world, exact replications of Newton’s spectrum experiment results: his Experimentum Crucis, the revelation of the rainbow. 

"[T]he most surprising and wonderful composition was that of Whiteness," Newton wrote. "I have often with Admiration beheld that all the Colours of the Prisme being made to converge, and thereby to be again mixed ... reproduced light, intirely [sic] and perfectly white.""  ~Carol Dawson

Suite comes in handmade engraved clamshell box with museum gloves and artist statement.