How to Cover Country Roads

Matt Dawson and his dreamlike cityscapes

Step One: Discover a new window into your craft. 

Pineville artist Matt Dawson excavated his cities, so to speak, when he came across an accordion sketchbook, sourced from an innocuous hobby store. Each page in this particular type of book is connected; when unfolded, the pages stretch until they reach a combined eight-and-a-half feet long. The format intrigued Dawson. 

“I thought, ‘What if I did one long street? Like if you were looking straight on, so each scene you look at, it’s always going to be facing you?’” That’s exactly what he did, taking care to illustrate “every nook and cranny of the neighborhood,” depicting a story in each alcove. He was pleased with the result. 

It wasn’t the beginning of his artistic career, but it marked a decisive turning point. Without formal training, Dawson has created art in his spare time for decades (at least since college, he mused, when he sold a few pieces). Around 2012, he began to approach his art more as a profession—that is, when he wasn’t working his day job as a pharmacist. More than a decade later, before and after work, Dawson diligently hones his craft; and not, he noted, as a matter of discipline, but because he simply enjoys the process. 

Informing Dawson’s practice as an artist are his left- and right-brain tendencies, which each play to the others’ strengths, rather than working in opposition. “I always kind of gravitated towards chemistry and medicine,” he said. “I tend to use a fair bit of mathematics [in my art], as far as I can go with proportion and scaling up, and I try to get an idea of the proportion of how the piece is going to flow.” 

This precision, subtle yet effective, brings to life Dawson’s gritty urban scenes and unpretentious visions of small country towns (in the Ashcan School style of painting, Dawson explained). It emerges in his pop art paintings (his mashup of Waffle House and van Gogh’s “Starry Night” is particularly striking) and sketches of shotgun houses in New Orleans.   

This last venture he began during the COVID pandemic, when he was searching for something to do every day—a small personal challenge. “I just started sketching houses in New Orleans, shotgun houses, and doing it head on, like it’s a one-point perspective of it, and just using a pen,” he said. “I used alcohol markers, and I gravitated toward watercolors. I guess it all seems like experimentation kind of led me to these paths.” 

Step Two: Take your new skill and produce something unexpected.

Dawson kept experimenting, dabbling in his sketchbooks, drawing fantastical cityscapes that somehow also feel achingly familiar. Dawson’s process of urban creation feels, in many ways, like bolding a font, or punching up a headline. He makes something standard and everyday more. 

“I take the most recognizable parts of each of those locations—just like if you were doing a caricature of a person, you take the things that are most recognizable, and amplify that,” Dawson said. “They all have their own personality. It’s definitely fun to bring that out.”

In 2025, Louisiana Book Festival organizers approached Dawson, searching for a different avenue to visually tell the story of the popular Capital Region event in its annual poster. 

“I thought, ‘Oh I have something that would work great for that,’” Dawson said. “I knew I couldn’t make an eight-foot-long thing. What if I stacked them on top of each other? Each row is like a bookshelf, or a street? I think most people . . . when they think of, like, landmarks in their cities, they don’t think of them in the exact order they’re in. I crammed everything together as if it was on the same street, like kind of just facing you. I expanded on that, too, and made them an aerial view. What if it had different blocks?” 

“I take the most recognizable parts of each of those locations—just like if you were doing a caricature of a person, you take the things that are most recognizable, and amplify that. They all have their own personality. It’s definitely fun to bring that out.” —Matt Dawson

The result was a stunning four-tiered cityscape, featuring beloved books by Southern authors blended seamlessly into familiar Louisiana tableaux. As is custom during the Louisiana Book Festival, the image was ubiquitous that November weekend, splashed upon the standard poster and promotional materials, as well as on t-shirts, mugs, and tote bags.

“I want to create things that will make people smile—will give them either a feeling of nostalgia or a slower time,” Dawson said. “ Not necessarily trying to put forth messages or anything. I guess I’m trying to do the opposite of that. People are bombarded with messages all the time. I just want people to feel happy, and comforted, when they see my work.”

Step Three: Adapt. Explore. Have fun with it.

Around the time he scored the gig for the festival poster, Dawson’s singular style caught the eye of Country Roads publisher James Fox-Smith, who envisioned something similar for the magazine’s November 2025 cover—the annual Film & Literature Issue.

Sourcing a list of independent bookstores and iconic movie theatres across Louisiana and Mississippi from the Country Roads editorial team, Dawson set out to create a monumental three-storey cityscape of Southern literature and film. Each level on the November cover is set during a different time of day, with the landmark shops and cinemas connected to produce what can only be described as an English major’s dream boulevard.    

For Dawson, incorporating disparate ideas into something cohesive and interesting is part of the fun: “‘Oh hey, how can we make this work?’”

His process for these types of projects is relatively straightforward. Dawson sketches each cityscape out with an archival ink pen, meaning the lines are “not going to fade, smear, [or] bleed when you put water on them,” he said. In about two minutes, the etching is permanent.  

After completing the sketch, Dawson said he decides where he wants his light source, then starts creating the shadows for his world, then the color. “With watercolor, every paint is like a different language. You have to learn how to bring out its best. When I’m working with watercolors—and acrylic is similar, but not as much—I try to work with its transparency. ”

[Learn more about how the Country Roads editorial team plans its covers in this episode of our DETOURS podcast: "Covering Country Roads"]

Again, for Country Roads’s much-anticipated April 2026 issue, Dawson has risen to the challenge of capturing the magazine’s “Road Trips” motif, taking in stride suggestions to capture both the region’s urban jewels and rural landscapes. The playful outcome indeed sums up the thrill of “adventures close to home.” 

When it comes to Dawson’s art, he doesn’t restrain himself to a particular medium, simply following what interests him at a particular time. He’d eventually like to paint something very large, and has considered putting together a book someday. This year, he hopes to pursue more oil painting. And in November, he will present a solo exhibition at the River Oaks Square Arts Center in Alexandria.  

In the meantime, the married father of two continues to spend his mornings and evenings quietly plugging away at his art. When he is asked to create something that captures a world close to home, it brings him all the more joy.

“I just really love all things Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. I think it’s a hidden gem that most people overlook,” he said. “They think ‘Louisiana,’  and they think ‘New Orleans.’ Which is fine, New Orleans is great, but there’s just so much more. I feel like when I do things like [covers for Country Roads], I can highlight other parts of the state, in the prairie, or north Louisiana, or down in the Atchafalaya Basin.”  

mattdawson.art.