Dale Sjogren began her training and career at the University of Michigan with a focus on the use of monochromatic drafting tools (graphite, charcoal, pen and ink, etc) as a means of exploring her environment with representational faithfulness.  Although she was trained in and explored other traditional mediums it was the use of line and monochromatic gradients as a means to delineated form and volume that initially drew her interest.  Despite her appreciation for color, it evaded her as a tool for expression.  She felt she did not have an artistic relationship with it.  And so for years, she left it alone.  

 

Things change however, and eventually, restless to expand her expressive vocabulary she began to explore anew, a world in color.  At first she found that line remained dominant in her imagery.  It shaped the forms, led the eye, and told the story, while color did its best to simply be as it appeared and fill the spaces between lines.    

 

But change begets change and due to her dogged tenacity and prolific workflow, color for her evolved.  She grew to understand that color is as much an illusion as is line.  And as such, can not, should not, be copied from a source.  For it to have meaning it can only be felt in the world and then felt back onto the canvas.  And now, her imagery complete, is that of one for whom the world reflects back to her as a shimmering balance of color, line, light, volume and space.  

 

Dale's body of work is best described as an homage to a kind of “collected” extended family.  As a humanist who cherishes connections, Dale has a singular and intimate interest in everyone she meets.  And with this comes the desire to mirror back to them, for them, the beauty she sees within.  This is how she employs her skill.  

 

At first she focused on immediate family but soon, like a street photographer with antiquated equipment, began offering to capture the likeness of those who peopled the world around her, and eventually that of those around them and so on.  And hence, to this day her portfolio contains many loving tributes to those whose essence she has transcribed in paint only from collections of snapshots and written correspondences.         

Although it can be said that Dale works from photographs, her process extends far beyond the painterly imitation of a preconceived image.  She does not compose and produce her own photographs.  Rather she solicits what she can from her subjects.  Purposely collecting informal snapshots, candid personal moments from which to compose a unique image.  And so, any of her works may result from the careful piecing together of multiple pictures.  This recomposition of imagery often extends to the figure itself.  And, if only a single reference is used, alterations of color, line and light are employed to reveal for her subject what a photograph could not.       

 

A perusal through Dales Sjogren’s portfolio reveals a series of discrete environmental portraits.  However, this is a successful illusion.  Far from being discrete, each image is a collage formed from the careful collection and refinement of images, words, memories, impressions, line, and volume, all coalescing and then reflecting back to us in color.

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And so, as a conductor in chroma whose orchestrations reflect not her, but her reverence for the beauty and summation of its multitudinous parts, Dale Sjogren celebrates her collected extended family.

 

-Morgon Belisle, M.F.A.