Practice
I work primarily in painting, with extensions into sculpture, photography, and video. The studio has been a constant presence over many years, a place where forms emerge, dissolve, and reappear through repetition, erosion, and return.
My process is guided less by narrative than by attention: to surface, pressure, balance, and subconscious decisions unfolding over time.
Archive
The archive holds work made across decades. This archive is a work in progress, and I’m still in the process of adding work.
Bio
Dax van Aalten (b. 1973, Clearwater, Florida) is an artist working primarily in painting, with additional practices in sculpture and photography. Based in the Cookeville area east of Nashville, Van Aalten’s work explores themes of abstraction, and the interplay between form and formlessness. His process is rooted in automatic techniques, allowing the unconscious to guide the creation of dynamic, often human-like forms that shift between abstraction and figuration. Van Aalten has exhibited in solo, and group shows nationally and internationally, including at Hansel and Gretel Picture Garden and Pocket Utopia in New York City, as well as Gallery Zurcher in Paris, France. He was a Fellow in Residence at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts in 2014. He has had two solo exhibitions with Red Arrow in Nashville, Tn.
