Artist's Statement
"This is the kind of art that can give pleasure to many. Color and line are applied with great elan to achieve paintings of deceptive simplicity. The territory is familiar, but Dahmen's deft handling creates joyful images that are a feast for the senses" Miles Unger, Boston Sunday Globe
My most recent landscape paintings are the result of my wanderings around the mid coast area of Maine for the past ten+ years. Walking in the woods on the mainland, on islands, and along the Damariscotta River near my home, I see paintings everywhere. The complexity of the woods is challenging.
My ideas begin in the natural world, but once a work is underway, the paint itself on the flat surface takes on a life of its own. Two-dimensional aspects interest me and in fact, I am as interested in painting what's in here as what's out there, and color, line and surface texture evolve as I work. The large scale format of some of my landscapes helps to create an environment into which the viewer can enter.
"to be nobody but yourself
in a world which is doing
its best day and night to
make you like everybody else
means to fight the hardest
battle which any
human being can
fight and never
stop fighting"
e e cummings