ART INSIGHTS Creating Wealth as a Successful Artist - John Dahlsen

People would tell me to look at this person’swork or that person’s work. At the time, Idecided it was best for me just to continuemaking my body of work and going intovarious avenues that it took me and reallysolidified what it was that I was doing withthese new materials instead of looking toother artists for inspiration. This enabledme to create work that was fresh and tomake my own mistakes to learn from. Mywork was not a derivative of anyone else’swork. This was important for me and hasalways been.I shifted again back to painting afterworking with found objects and recycledmaterials for so many years. I was askedby a very major recycling company inAustralia to draw up some public artproposals for works that were intended forplacement outside buildings and factoriesthroughout Australia. When I toured oneparticular factory I noticed that their plasticfabricating machines were pumping outwhat are called “purges” at the end of arun. These were like big blobs that would121