John Dahlsen, environmental artist and contemporary painter

http://www.johndahlsen.com/

Black Assembledge

"The initial collection of these objects, consisted of approximately 80 jumbo garden bags full of beach found litter. I first piled this collection up in my studio and soon realized the potential of a giant palette. Then I began the selections of yellow coloured plastics to make up it’s own pile in the studio, then the red, then the blues, the rope & strings, the plastic coke bottles, the thongs etc. Soon the floor of the studio did resemble a giant painters palate. 

Seeing all this develop had the effect of sewing the seed, for I later had the notion of making assemblages of each of these objects once it was all sorted.
This occurred to me as a natural extension of the process I was undergoing in the studio as a painter. A whole new palette of colour and shape revealing itself to me immediately affected me; I had never seen such hues and forms before, all which enabled me to make new environmental art."