Nora Dahlberg {Senior Art Portfolio}
About Nora Dahlberg
Raised in Arlington, VA, Nora has attended the Field School since freshmen year. Now a senior, Nora has created a series of landscapes and waterscapes symbolozing "a year in the life" with a painting for each month of the year.
Nora enjoys the 2D fine arts, particularly drawing and painting, and completed this portfolio over the course of the last eight months, beginning in September, 2013. Aside from art, Nora enjoys spending time in the outdoors, where she finds most of her inspiration.
Artist's Statement
When people look at my work, I want them to think, “Wow--you painted that?!” I want them to be awed and to be captured by the amount of precision that goes into each brush stroke, detail, and shade of color. I want my work to look as realistic as possible. I don’t necessarily want it to look like a painting or a drawing; I want it to look alive, like a window looking out into the world. I want to capture nature and light in their most ideal and extreme states of being: dawn, dusk, high noon; winter, summer, spring and fall.
When looking for an image to paint, I pay close attention to light. I want to see the light playing with different colors. I want to capture the sun highlighting the natural hues of the world in different, mesmerizing ways, such as how the sky turns pink and purple right before the sun sets or how everything looks so green and golden in the early morning. I look for images that have captivating subjects and colors that you don’t see everyday, but maybe only a few times a year. I look for images that mean something to me or to the people I am painting for. In the end, I really am just looking for a pretty picture, but that “pretty” quality is only beautiful to me because I have experienced and appreciate the New England coast and the rolling hills of a horse pasture and I can connect those images with vivid memories. I paint these images so that I can share my experiences with others.
I chose to paint this series of land- and waterscapes for a number of reasons. Last year, I studied the Hudson River School of painters in history class, and I became quite infatuated with the American landscape. I also was given the opportunity to paint a mini-series of my choice last year as a junior and I chose landscapes to experiment with my skills; I had never painted landscapes before and I was very pleased with the results. It turns out that I am quite talented. When wandering the halls of art galleries around the world, I have always been most drawn to land-, water-, and skyscapes. All in all, landscapes felt like the right choice for me when planning my senior portfolio. I appreciate how someone can create a realistic portrayal of life with her own two hands, and while the same can be said of portraits, frankly they just creep me out--I don’t like how the eyes follow you wherever you go.