Meet Levern Dahlman
Levern Dahlman is a Chicagoland-based photographer and artist, specializing in Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) photography along with landscape and abstract paintings.
Her exploration of experimental photography yields intriguing, evocative images. Her ICM photographs are like miniature time machines that record natural movements of organic objects paired with her own joyful camera movements.
Her paintings include the use of traditional and unusual painting devices such as ‘found’ scraping tools. She strives to build alternating layers of thin glazed layers and thick impasto paints to create a vibrant, visual playground for the viewer to enjoy.
Artist Statement
My artistic goal is to explore intersections of time, movement and color to reveal how events can overlap in the same image. I aim to create painterly, vibrant photographs and paintings that enable us to experience the real, the possible and the juxtaposition of these two elements.
I believe what we see as real and what we imagine through daydreams, meditations and fantasies are not separated by sharply defined borders. Reality and imagined worlds together possess fluid, overlapping edges, with reality, aspirations and memories blending into each other. This mixture of life forces brings us new insights about ourselves and our universe.
With the photographs I create I generally use a longer shutter speed to capture natural movement in a scene as well as the effects of graceful movements of my camera. Wonderful, ethereal places are discovered through this camera movement, derived from what may appear to be a mundane scene.
I believe the most authentic art each of us can create tells our individual histories, struggles and triumphs. Thus, I start my paintings by re-envisioning and abstracting key events, people and places in my life. I then use that energy to represent those events and places through gestural marks, representational shapes and vibrant colors.
My artistic visions are influenced by Wolf Kahn, Richard Mayhew, J. M. W. Turner, Claude Monet and Brian Rutenberg and Ken Elliott. Andy Gray, Pep Ventosa, Doug Chinnery, Valda Bailey and Abelardo Morell are among my photographic influences.
Levern was recently featured in the September, 2022 issue of ICM Magazine. Click here to see the first page of the article.
Click here to see the full article if you have been granted permission via a password code.