My personal story reads like a book of artist tips. One of my favourite artist tips is that although you really do need to wait for inspiration to wash up, to grab hold of it you must first make your way to the shore. If you’re willing to meet inspiration halfway, you could catch a wave so big that you need help carrying it all back to the studio.
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Artist tips through John Dahlsen’s personal story
My wife and I had just moved into a beautiful new home in Byron Bay that had the most lovely lime-washed ceilings and walls. I remember saying to her that I wanted to make drift wood furniture for it. We went to some of these very remote beaches where the driftwood piled up high in rocky coves and on beaches that were seldom walked upon and were reached by scaling down cliffs. I noticed there not only driftwood washed up on the beaches; there were also piles of plastics, ropes, Styrofoam, plastic bottles, buoys and thongs.
I hadn’t seen the extent of this sort of ocean litter before. I collected somewhere around 80 jumbo garbage bags full of this plastic stuff and sent it all by truck back to my studio along with the driftwood.
I suppose there existed in me a very defined sensibility about the environment to want to pick up all this flotsam and jetsam. I’m glad to know that this response happened quite naturally within me. The inspiration to consider these found objects as possible material for my art making process is a different matter.
As I intended, I completed the driftwood furniture. When that project was complete, I tipped all of the plastic bags out onto the studio floor and ended up with a giant pile of trash. I had friends dropping by asking me if I was ok! Then I saw the giant palette emerge, and I began to approach the aggregate of found objects in a fairly pragmatic way. The first series of work that I ended up creating at that time I called contemporary landscapes. They looked almost like a cross cut through the soil. I ended up making very colourful, almost painterly compositions behind Perspex.
I hope this story helps with a few tips on how to journey positively in your art practice.
