Jaren Dahlstrom

Jaren Dahlstrom was born in San Francisco, CA 1945. He 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. For past 20 years he has returned to reflections as an inspiration for his paintings. Using his computer to distort, and manipulate the reflective images making them even more abstract. The resulting images are the basis for his paintings and prints. In the past couple of years, he began introducing geometric shapes to these computer generated images. Often 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. It is a style he calls “abstract reality”. Jaren has had numerous goup shows thoughout California, United States and Europe, the Oakland Museum of CA, with several solo shows including Uninversity of Portland. Included in private collectoions in the US and Europe. Regularly shows at TAG Gallery in Los Angles. He has been honored with numerous awards for his painting and drawings over the years.

He taught design and print production at Contra Costa College and UC Berkeley Extension in San Francisco and Berkeley for 28 years. He was the founder and creative director of award winning Crow-Quill Studios, a communication design firm in San Francisco, from 1971-2003, creating graphic design for Fortune 500 companies. His has been featured in serveral international design publicatioins. His work is included the permanent collection of the New York Folk Art Museum, in New York City, NY. He currently maintains a painting studio in Vallejo, CA.

Artist Statement

Jaren Dahlstrom 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 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 elusion of magic reality. Transitory and yet more intense than the real. This fusion of light creates intense colors, surprising contrasts and fantastic shapes, which is in sharp contrast with the geometric shapes you find in his current paintings.