Mike O’Connor “The Interview 2”
Dahlsen was an abstract painter living in Western Australia when he took up the environmental banner.
“I’ve worked with ‘found’ and recycled objects for about 10 years now, and I’ve done everything from large public artworks to private commissions and paintings,” he says.
Back in his studio, he shows me part of his portfolio.
“It’s a broad spectrum,” he says.
I’d rather pluck out my eyelashes than step into a modern art gallery, but find myself impressed by Dahlsen’s works executed with “found” objects such as plastic bags and chunks of plastic detritus.
More recently, however, his concerns about the future of the planet have moved him to change focus.
“l’ve actually gone back to painting more traditional landscapes and seascapes of Byron Bay and its surrounds,” he says.
“It’s an area which is incredibly precious to me. The more I read about global warming, I get glimpses of untold changes, which could happen anytime – tomorrow.
“It concerns me to the point where I want to start recording some of the beauty of this area, because I don’t know what’s going to happen in the near future, plus painting these is giving me a huge amount of joy.”
“I was reading this morning that the melting of the icecaps is happening at least three times faster than what is being reported. That sort of thing can only bring about cataclysmic changes.
“I’ve never been a doomsayer. The positive side is that it can bring about quantum shifts in the consciousness of people on this planet – and probably will, and help to take us into the next age, whatever that is going to be,” he says, shrugging.
Dahlsen has collected his “found” material all along the northern NSW coastline, a latter-day beachcomber. “I’ve even been to South Stradbroke Island, where I was artist in residence at Couran Cove at one stage,” he says.
“I walked up and down the 17km of beach there, and over a couple of weeks collected 70 or 80 jumbo garbage bags full of things that had washed up on the shore.”
As I leave I pause by the thong totem. “I won the Wynne Prize with that,” he says.
“That’s a lot of thongs,” I say. “Did you pinch them?”
“No,” he says, horrified. “I found them on the beach!”
“Just joking,” I say, smiling, while eyeing off a red one, which looked suspiciously like one-half of a pair I lost in the beer garden of the Point Lookout Hotel in 1983.
