Francis Neil Dawson CNZM (born 6 November 1948) is a New Zealand artist best known for his large-scale civic sculptures.

[2] While in the fourth form, Dawson climbed onto the assembly hall roof and painted April Fool in large white letters.

This won him front page exposure in the Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune and he regards this escapade as the "beginning of [his] career in public art.

On his return, Dawson drove a truck for four years and in 1975 began teaching drawing and design at Christchurch Polytechnic.

[6] The following year the Robert McDougall Art Gallery gave Dawson his first major public museum exhibition which he titled Seascape .

[12] The rock-shaped ‘drawing’ was computer-generated and based on a rock found by Dawson in McCormack’s Bay a few kilometres from his studio.

1989 Dawson was invited to participate in the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Dawson cut 11 fern shapes and formed them into a sphere 3.4 metres in diameter and suspended it above Wellington’s Civic Square.

[26] After a long time in storage, it was eventually decided to install Fanfare next to State Highway 1, just south of the Waimakariri River Bridge to welcome visitors coming to the city from the north.

[28] Dalziel, with reference to Fanfare's first installation in Sydney and to the destructive Christchurch earthquakes, said at the ceremony:[29] 'today feels like it's come home and it's really going to be a big statement about what our city is and what it's going to become'.

[31] It was initially planned that the sculpture would hover over the centre of Latimer Square, along the axis of Worcester Street, so make a visual connection with Christchurch Cathedral.