Daisy-Anne Dickson
Daisy-Anne is an abstract artist based just outside of Atlanta, GA. Her intuitive and expressionistic abstract paintings are intertwined with the art of storytelling, centering around themes of brokenness, healing, growth, renewal, and restoration. Daisy largely emphasizes layers, texture, motion, and color to create a language of her own. Salvaging discarded, surplus, neglected, or broken materials to repurpose in her work has become a mainstay of her style.
Healing has become a recurring role and theme in both Daisy’s life and work. After being formally educated in oil painting, Daisy went on to earn a degree in nursing, all while raising a family. Currently, Daisy remains passionate about continuing her work as a registered nurse in both the emergency room and surgical services while working as a full-time artist.
Her work is aptly centered around and integral to the experiences of healing, restoration, and the relationship between polarities such as life and death. Daisy’s love of science can be seen in her evolving experimental processes and use of materials. Daisy currently works out of her home studio in Duluth, GA.
“I love the idea of bringing new life to something. The idea that nothing is destroyed and nothing is created, but simply transformed. This is how my art gives me hope and helps me to see the beauty in everything.”
Artist Statement
I create work about the risk and beauty of defying limits and pushing beyond what we are capable of. My use of salvaged materials speaks to the process of transformation and restoration, while my art transcends both metaphorical and literal frameworks. I may work on canvas with paints, inks, and salvaged frames, or on paper utilizing salvaged paints, scraps of fabrics, monoprints, and homemade papers. Regardless of the vehicle, my process is built on organic and intuitive movement, created by brushwork or the marks of my own fingers in thick layers. I build on this to achieve a sense of momentum that eventually breaks free from boundaries. With paint, this may look like dynamic brushwork endlessly overlapping and curling in on itself until it reaches up from the canvas onto the frame. While paper and fabric works are assembled and reassembled countless times like a puzzle, partially spilling out onto a matted margin. By reaching beyond what is meant to contain it, the work becomes a parallel to the desire to break free and a bold act of sovereignty.
Contact
https://www.daisyanne.art
hellodaisyanne@yahoo.com
@daisyanne.art
Interview
What inspires your art practice and keeps you motivated?
Simply put, life. The trials, tribulations, and the joy. From the small to the large things in life. Creating art is really just my way of processing life... my meditation, how I assimilate and reflect or make decisions. Whenever I am stuck on something, overjoyed, or overwhelmed, art helps me fully experience and process these emotions. I often think perhaps emotions are so complex that I need art to help me understand them on a deeper level. So as long as I am experiencing life and all the emotions that go with it, I will be creating art along the way.
How does your mission as an artist influence the work you create?
First, my mission as an artist is to create soulful and authentic work. I often incorporate salvaged materials of some kind because it is a deeply held belief of mine that we can find beauty anywhere, even in the darkest of times. That idea is what gives me hope and has become my mission. And so, this mission pushes me to explore and find new ways to express myself and find what I believe is beauty--even in the discarded, broken, and neglected items I come across and use in my work. My mission holds me accountable and gets me out of my comfort zone. It requires me to be completely honest with myself and true to my style and what is representative of me. It does this by helping me resist the temptation of creating for an audience, and instead create authentically--without being influenced or consumed by the allure of the market, sales, and trends.
Can you share a key part of your creative process that helps you stay focused?
It sounds ironic to say, but a key part of my process is to always make time to experiment and play. Even if I have a pressed deadline to meet, I make sure I have time to play with something completely unrelated. To me, "play" releases you from the judgment of your own work or any expectations of it being "good" or "bad." It simply is the act of playing and creating to counteract the seriousness that art as a business can often become. In a lot of ways, letting myself continue to explore ideas and get them out of my head actually lets my imagination and curiosity rest a bit so that I can go back to the focus of another project I'm working on. As an aside, it's also a wonderful cure for creative block!
What mindset do you rely on to overcome challenges in your art career?
The mindset that I most often come back to is that of patience and faith in "the long game." Early on with festivals and fairs, I traveled out of state and did terribly at two of them. I was devastated and so stressed about the money I had invested--spending thousands and only making back a very small fraction of that. However, after one connection I made at each of those, I ended up with the largest commission of my career and with the other, just this past year, gained gallery representation. That gallery representation also led to the largest sale of multiple works of my entire career--by far. The commission took nearly a year after the festival to come to fruition, and the gallery representation from the other event took nearly three years. These are just two quick examples of this at work in my own career. Art is a lifelong career of passion, work, and most of all: connection. Connections are not a quick business, and genuine connection and trust take years to build if they are to span and support your career. So, whenever an opportunity seems to pass me by, or an exhibition or event does not give that immediate "pay out," I remind myself of the many examples of what patience and relationship building have earned me.
How do you hope your art impacts the world or your community?
I hope that my work reaches people on an emotional level. I want it to inspire the hope and joy in others that it creates inside me. I firmly believe that original art carries the energy of the artist who created it, and I hope that energy of mine can be felt by those who see it, shining like a light in the dark. I would love to think of my work as a beacon in that way.
