Talented Penola artist Dagny Strand is rarely seen without a pencil and sketchbook in hand and has been passionate about art from a very young age.
As early as pre-school, Ms Strand remembered making animal sculptures out of her father’s matches and green plums.
“I think it’s just always been that I’d look at something and see the potential to create a visual dialogue that creates a new narrative for the viewer,” she said.
Ms Strand said she won a large pencil at school when she was six years of age in a drawing competition, which was a lightbulb moment when she realised her love for art.
She uses a variety of recycled materials in her work and does sculpture, drawing, painting, jewellery making and book binding, which she learnt from a book binding master in Kyoto, Japan in 2019.
Ms Strand also makes her own art materials, such as gathering fallen branches from willow trees along the Glenelg River to make soft drawing charcoal.
She processes the branches and burns them in the home slow combustion heater overnight, ready to use the next day.
“I am passionate about drawing and painting and enjoy watercolour and oil paint, oil paint is a great medium that allows a lot of flexibility in the work,” she said.
“I paint in a realistic manner but am conceptual leading to narrative in my subjects.
“A lot of it is about the human condition, about who we are, what I see, I try to evoke a sense of what’s going on rather than just getting a likeness.”
Ms Strand studied in London at the Shaftesbury Centre for Drawing and achieved a Bachelor of Arts, Visual Arts, at Adelaide University when the art school was located in Underdale, which was very much a conceptual art school at the time.
She has been involved with many exhibitions, including at least 40 combined shows and 20 solo and recently finished an Adelaide Fringe exhibition at Mrs Harris’ Shop called ‘Ten’.
People can view her work in an ongoing exhibition at Café Lito in Penola while enjoying a coffee.
“Besides the exhibition work that I do, I also do commission pieces, which is very different again but can very interesting,” she said.
“As sometimes I may be doing a portrait of a person then other times I may be doing a painting of someone’s pet cat or dog, I have even painted pet kangaroos at times.”
The talented artist has won numerous awards including the John Shaw Neilson Acquisitive Art Prize, the Peake Prize twice, the Southern Ocean Art Prize and the Wattle Range art prize.
“I always carry my sketchbook for the opportunity to catch a quick sketch of someone or something, sometimes it may just be some notes to use in a drawing or painting later in my studio,” Ms Strand said.
“I go out plein air painting, often with my friend Julie Kent, an artist from Sandford in Victoria, but most times I just go painting in the area around Penola.”
Ms Strand said painting plein air provided her with many problem-solving moments as the light and weather could change so quickly and one of her favourite places was the arboretum out at Greenrise.
“I love doing what I do and every day I get the chance to create something new,” she said.
