To lean and to prop are the two behaviour patterns that Dawes allows, indeed welcomes to the canvas in his working process. His painting process is usually a lengthy one, which involves a gradual distillation of everything that makes a scene memorable: mood and atmosphere, feeling and emotions, bodily sensation and state of mind. In Dawes’s case, succession is signified physically by various means: by then overlay of one colour on another, by the orchestration and direction of the poured lines and shapes, by the implied sequential movements of the painter’s hand.