My creative medium shifted from abstract painting to working as an environmental artist, as a result of an artistic accident during the mid 1990's. I was collecting driftwood, on a remote Victorian Coastline, with the intention of making furniture and stumbled upon vast amounts of plastic ocean debris.

My foray into working with driftwood assemblages, began in 1998 and continued until 2004. An article described the driftwood assemblages, which I exhibited in a solo show at the John Gordon Gallery Coffs Harbour in early 2004 as follows:

"John Dahlsen isn't your average artist. A bold statement to make but appropriate after you realize the sheer depth and determination which goes into the work this man has produced over the past seven years. Although he has been within art circles for much longer than that, it is only in the most recent years, which have seen Dahlsen create a different form of art with environmental messages and strong statements. It is 'found' object art, be that organic or inorganic.

He would be seen scavenging beaches in search of plastics, specific colours and sizes. He is also known for venturing along the edge of Victoria alone in search of driftwood. Boat trips, four-wheel-drive tours and scaling 40 meter-high cliffs, were all part of the process for this driftwood exhibition and Dahlsen admits at times there were death-defying moments grabbing the perfect piece of wood."

The work on show in the 2004 Wynne Prize as a finalist, at the Art Gallery of NSW, titled "Driftwood Assemblage # 1" was a diptych from this series.

The other focus of my environmental artistic activity over the past few years, is in the area of large-scale prints and paintings on canvas and paper. This exploration into prints was first initiated in 1999 and developed into my incorporating both screen print, digital print technology and painting in my work. It satisfied my concerns with advances in technology where I could begin to incorporate various images of the found plastics.

In 1999 I developed a series of Cibachrome photographs taken from above - a birds eye view of the found plastics, I then developed these into complex high resolution large scale works on canvas, utilising contemporary computer and screen printing advances. The development of these works immediately followed the construction of my web site, during which I was to also learn the scope of possibilities within digital media. As well as embracing the digital and screen-printing arena, it also heralded my return to painting which was my main chosen medium for many years.

The central concerns of my work are with contemporary environmental art practice. I have for many years been working with found and recycled objects, most hand-picked by myself from somewhere along the Australian Coastline. In fact it literally amazes me to think how many times I have bent over to pick up the many thousands of pieces of plastic debris that made up that aspect of my art, each piece jostled around for who knows how long by sand, sun and ocean, their form faded and rounded by the elements.

The unabated dumping of thousands of tonnes of plastics has been expressed in my assemblages, installations, totems, digital prints and public artworks. And yet, despite my outrage at this environmental vandalism, I returned to the beach daily to find more pieces for my artist's palette. In an uncanny way, these plastics, as I sorted them and arranged them in my studio took on an unspeakable, indefinable and quite a magical beauty, which always fascinated me.