Promoting art is about promoting yourself, not in a crass, “see how wonderful I am” way, but in a way that promotes your vision, the core of what makes you…well, you. It takes courage, promoting art and putting yourself out there for public inspection, but so does creating art that tells your private truth.
Promoting art John Dahlsen’s way
I remember telling the media during the mid-90s that I hoped one day I would stop making art out of found plastics because the beaches were clean. Although the beaches around my hometown are a lot cleaner these days due to community effort, on a worldwide scale ocean litter has gotten much worse. Nowadays I would not be able to create the kind of found object works from collecting plastics off the local beaches here.
I believe my secret with promoting my art has beento constantly have the courage to put myself out. When I have exhibitions and are part of prestigious prizes or shows, I always have a detailed press release prepared for the media. This is really a no-brainer. The media appreciate this effort and this way you get free editorial and have a good say in what goes to print or is read out over the radio or on Television.
Back to the art: My paintings of landscapes and seascapes were not pretty pictures. They are rather edgy and infused with a sense of urgency. These paintings have in a sense a kind of foreboding as regards the current ecological crisis. We exist in a state of urgency. We don’t know how long we’re going to be fortunate enough to have our planet as a life-giving place that is healthy enough to support life.
I am now working with driftwood again. It’s great to not feel any restriction in what it is that I create. I’m just enjoying going with the flow with my creativity. I had quite a large amount of it in storage, and it’s been great to just get it out and work it into some really interesting sculptures- sculptures that I’ve never seen before. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. It might be that I decide on another journey and collect driftwood from really remote locations. Or I might go to New York and have an epiphany in the presence of Mark Rothko paintings. The future is wide open.
