Jaren Dahlstrom is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning artist based in California, USA. For the past 20+ years he has been working on his “abstract reality” series of paintings. These surrealistic fractured light paintings are based on the concept of how reflections create abstracted images.
This fusion of light creates surprising contrasts and intense colors, while often producing confused lines and fantastical distorted outlines, contrasted with the geometric shapes and creating a style of painting that seems somehow familiar yet new.
Jaren was born in San Francisco, California in 1945 and has been drawing and painting since he was a child. He has a AA design in fine art, from Contra Costa College and attended Art Center College of Design, California College of Arts and Crafts, and Cal State University Hayward. Having grown up near San Francisco Bay, Jaren has always been fascinated by reflections, and how light plays on water.
Often, Jaren will use his computer to distort, and manipulate the reflective photos he takes, making them even more abstract. The resulting images are the basis for his paintings. In the past several years, he began introducing geometric shapes to these computer-generated images - sometimes creating 20 or more images before being satisfied with the result. Jaren then makes a digital print, which he uses to produce the finished painting.
Jaren’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and his work is in collections regionally, nationally and in Europe. His work is also included the permanent collection of the New York Folk Art Museum, in New York City, NY.
Jaren was highlighted in Fusion Art’s Artist Spotlight series in August 2021.
Jaren Dahlstrom is best known for his acrylic paintings of reflections, which form abstractions derived from transient movement of light on water. These distortions created in a moment of time are never quite the same. In this fusion of light patterns are created. Using these images form the basis for further manipulation in his computer to exaggerate and add geometric forms. The resulting paintings are what he calls "abstract reality" which often looks quite different from the original reflected image. Yet it carries the essence of the light and brilliant color with strength that is unique in his paintings.
My work captures reflected light on water and other surfaces. The fleeting elusions, undulating constantly on a liquid world of enhanced color distorted by movement, creating abstract images of even the most mundane objects. These objects captured in a moment in time are never to be repeated in the exact same way. A moment when light and water fuse to form an illusion of magic reality. Transitory and yet more intense than the real.
Visit Jaren at the below links to learn more about him, his art and to buy an artwork from him.
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