about

bio

Andrea Dale was born and raised in Iowa. Growing up in a rural community provided her with a strong connection to nature and an affinity for wide open spaces. Dale has been working with paint from a young age and started exploring raw materials such as steel, granite, and wood when she began designing furniture. She is currently living and working in the Mojave Desert of California. Her most current work is showcased in the Netflix documentary series, Fire Chasers and the upcoming Cape Cod Museum of Art's Healing Nature Exhibition.

artist statement

The idea that there is a reality that surpasses human understanding or experience isn’t difficult for me to imagine, especially as an artist. I create art that is meant to be approachable and experienced on an instinctual, primal level. That is not to say intellectual depths aren’t important or worth exploring, quite the contrary, but my core interests lie in things that are felt rather than explained. This interest propels me to explore the roots of emotion within human connection and disconnection. My work lures the viewer in by relying on humanity’s love of beauty, but delivers a statement about the resilient power of connection or the danger of living life in a state of disconnect from self and empathy.

My desire to push people toward self reflection and empathy informs all of my work, as I believe this is a path to reversing the atrocities we are committing toward our planet, each other, and ourselves. This belief directly impacts my choice to use reflective materials in my work such as mirror-polished stainless steel and high-gloss resin. I incorporate other materials such as wildfire ash and bone because of their basic elemental quality. Working with these particular substances, feels like tapping into the unseen history of its former life while calling forth its story. Contact with these materials often speak to us on a fundamental, non-verbal level.

Influenced by the comfort of certainty in minimalism and the uncertain emotive depths of mysticism, my work lives in the tension between these worlds.