RA Collection: People and Organisations
Dawn Hunter is a prolific visual artist who has exhibited her artwork at leading galleries and academic institutions internationally. Her creative interests have spanned traditional Plein Air landscape painting, Pop Culture graphic satire, and Neuroscience illustration. While working as a medical illustrator, she was struck and inspired by Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s drawings when completing Neuroanatomy figures for the new edition of the textbook Human Neuroanatomy by Dr. James R. Augustine (Wiley-Blackwell 2017). She embraced her newfound muse, Cajal, and immediately delved into creating a comprehensive artistic series exploring his scientific illustrations and personal life.
Dawn Hunter’s artwork about Santiago Ramón y Cajal has received much acclaim from the Neuroscience community. This series has been awarded fellowships and grants supporting it, most notably a Fulbright España Senior Research Fellowship through the Fulbright Foundation, Washington, DC. This series has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions at leading medical research institutions such as the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and the Instituto Cajal, Madrid, Spain. She has participated in collaborative symposiums held in honor of Cajal that the NIH and the Instituto Cajal facilitated. She was invited to be a presenter at the 17th National Congress of the Spanish Society of Neuroscience, Alicante, Spain, while serving as a Fulbright España Senior Research Scholar. She has written articles for the National Library of Medicine’s Circulating Now about her perceptions of Cajal’s drawings. News of her research has been featured in professional magazines in the field, such as Scientific American®. The College of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas, hosted a solo exhibition of The Cajal Inventory in 2021. The show featured over 200 unique drawings Dawn created while referencing primary sources held in the Legado Cajal at the Instituto Cajal, Madrid, Spain. In 2022 she became the first artist to be elected to the Board of Directors of the Cajal Club, a prestigious international Neuroscience organization established in 1947 to celebrate Neuroanatomy, and one of the leading founders of modern Neuroscience, Santiago Ramón y Cajal. [Source: the artist].
Starr Fellow, Royal Academy Schools 1993-94.
RA Schools student from 1993 to 1994
Gender: Female