You need to prove yourself over time and build your resume one line at a time, establishing consistent track records of successful shows. You need to convince gallery directors that you’re committed to making art. You must impress curators and critics. And you must demonstrate you’re capable of doing what’s expected – selling well and selling consistently. Galleries don’t establish artists’ reputations – they only enhance them.
I remember in one of my first exhibitions after I got out of art school, I made work with complicated theory, which was reflected in the work in a number of ways that was not very clear to the viewing public. For example many of the artworks were hanging off the wall in very strange angles. They were very odd shapes for canvases and works on paper, however it was not explained in any way that the public could fully understand it.
Whatever it is you do, you need to discover the inner nourishment that brings fulfilment to your life.
One time an interviewer asked the Australian painter Brett Whiteley, “What is more important for you art or life?” He responded by saying: “Life is”. I couldn’t agree more.
On a deep level, creating wealth for example, is adding value. A state of not being divided internally, will automatically attract a state of prosperity, you could call this a state of oneness.
From time to time it’s important to identify the state you are in and how much of you is in conflict with yourself and how much of you is in a state of completeness within yourself.
How is your health?
How is your state of prosperity?
How are your relationships?
Which part of your consciousness are you aligned to – the higher or the lower?
I’m mentioning my own personal experience here, simply because I see that through using some of the above principles, including expanding to higher consciousness, it has helped me come to terms with my life and its challenges.
I believe we have tremendous growth occurring through our activities in the studio as artists. It’s not the intention in this last chapter to go into these particular transformative possibilities, as each of us has experiences in our studios, which form our own individual transformation as artists and form our own transformation with the work. This can happen in the way of making spectacular jumps in perception, simply through being alert to the accident occurring in your work.
Dahlsen, by comparison, is an optimist. To begin with, he’s already made a positive statement by clearing off the unsightly stuff that is lethal to fish and fowl. (Australia’s wildlife conservancies adore Dahlsen’s work, which was hardly his intention, but so be it.)
He wanted to impart a kind of Minimalist stability to his jumbles of deep true colours. One early assemblage of coffee lids, cooler fragments and bottle tops shared the ethereal white-on-white aura of a Robert Ryman abstraction or a William Bailey still life—only much more energetically. Piling up black combs, disposable razors and pieces of rope yielded a Louise Nevelson-like sculpture with attitude.
I want to explain here, that expense and complication doesn’t have to be the case. I’m now going to teach you in the following explanation, how to set up what is known as a blog.
A blog is essentially a website. On the Internet these days, it is very easy to find blog sites that are free. One such site, which is owned by Google is called blogger.com.
There is also another one called WordPress.com, which is also a great blog facility. Follow these easy steps to set up your own site. Simply follow the prompts, which are as follows:
Speakers need to be able to sell what it is they’re speaking about. This can range from information about modern art, or about sculpture for example.
You need to understand that when you are standing in front of an audience delivering a lecture, making a public speaking engagement, you are selling whatever it is you’re speaking about.
In one sense your topic is already defined. How do you make yourself unique given that the above is true? It is important to remember that whether you’re an artist, a student, a bureaucrat in the arts industry, everyone has their own unique story to tell, this is simply because everyone is different and has had different life experiences that brings them to the point where they are in their lives.
You can use a number of methods in your public speaking engagements. I have one called the “Fast track highway to success” for example, which I articulate through a series of diagrams, how easy it is to get sidetracked when you’re doing a project and get lost, only to eventually find yourself back on the superhighway way behind your competition.
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.”
These artworks exemplify my commitment as an artist to express contemporary social and environmental concerns.
By presenting this art to the public it will hopefully have people thinking about the deeper meaning of the work, in particular the environmental issues we currently face.
I knew that an unseen intelligence was at work and soon realized the potential of a giant palate. Then I began the selections of yellow coloured plastics to make up its own pile in the studio, then the red, then the blues, the rope & strings, the plastic coke bottles, the thongs, etc. Soon the floor of the studio did resemble a giant painters palate.?
John Dahlsen: I was collecting driftwood, on a remote Victorian Coastline, with the intention of making furniture and stumbled upon vast amounts of plastic ocean debris. This whole new palette of colour and shape revealing itself to me immediately affected me; I had never seen such hues and forms before which enabled me to make new environmental art.?
Since then – for approximately 10 years, I scoured Australian beaches for found objects, much of which I found as washed up ‘ocean litter’. I have since discovered this is a worldwide phenomenon, affecting beaches on a global level.
John Dahlsen has been painting and sculpting in his native Australia for the past 20 years. In that time his work has evolved from the formal training he received in art school to incorporating new elements also native to Australia – ocean litter: plastic bags, driftwood, rope and any other detritus washed up on the beach.
Like a Mark Rothko painting (an influence Dahlsen acknowledges), the colour combinations are at once so subtle yet so strong that they can spur powerful emotions.
The garbage offers a complex range of hues, textures, and sizes. Yet any sense of awe is tempered by the dismay of recollecting what the assemblages are made of. It’s hard not to see that it’s trash inside the frame.
When he first started, he stumbled upon vast amounts of plastic ocean debris, collecting them in 80 jumbo garden bags full of beach-found litter. “When I first piled this collection up in my studio, I had friends drop by asking if I was okay!” he adds.
John didn’t see a giant mound of trash – rather, his unseen intelligence was at work. He saw a giant painter’s palate of colours and shapes, hues and forms: selections of yellow coloured plastics, the red, then the blues, the rope and strings, the plastic coke bottles, the thongs… the list goes on.
“As I worked with these objects, I became even more fascinated by the way they had been modified and weathered by the ocean and nature’s elements,” says Mr Dahlsen.
My challenge as an artist is to take these found objects, which might on first meeting have no apparent dialogue and to work with them until they speak and tell their story.”??
This work was made from found driftwood objects collected from Australian beaches. ??From the artist statement; “My creative medium changed to found art as a result of one such ‘accident’ in 1997. I was collecting driftwood, on a remote Victorian Coastline, with the intention of making furniture and stumbled upon vast amounts of plastic ocean debris. A whole new palette of colour and shape revealing itself to me immediately affected me.
Initially, Dahlsen was responding to an instinct to clean the beach as he wandered along, but his tidy-ups triggered more than a sense of satisfaction:
“I was amazed at how pristine the beaches looked each time I left a location, but it was also during this collecting time that I became more intrigued by what nature had done to the plastics,” he says.
Once his loot arrived home, the artist set about creating his first environmental work, a semi-abstract “landscape” made from abandoned plastic objects assembled behind perspex.
