Regional Spotlight Artist Profile | Karee Dahl
Published on 07 October 2026
The Regional Spotlight initiative is an opportunity for Wide-Bay Burnett artists at any stage in their career, working in any visual art medium, to receive mentorship and share their work at the gallery. Developed from an expressions of interest process, the 2026 exhibition brings a multifaceted survey of local artists sharing their personal connection to space, landscape, environment, home and time through mediums of painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture and mixed media work.
Multidisciplinary contemporary practitioner Karee Dahl draws using thread to honour the everyday small acts of creativity we experience through mark making.
How long have you been making artwork?
I have always been a maker of things; pictures, craft, food, clothes, fences, buildings, crops, homes… ‘art’ eventually saved me from all this.
Studying fine arts finally gave me the reason to ‘do’ without the being told, asked or obliged to ‘make.’ So, I guess since I completed the obligatory university degree in 1991, I have been making artwork - a practice that evolves overtime.
What are your favourite mediums to work with and why?
My absolute favourite, favourite medium is charcoal. Charcoal on large white paper and specifically life drawing with charcoal.
This medium has allowed me a freedom to understand the flexibility of all mediums – the understanding of mark making as a means of recording what you see or feel is a freedom that builds in ones’ approach to any medium, material … an ability to manipulate mark making, be it in 2D or 3D.
Who/what inspires or influences you?
Oh my goodness… seriously I was so fortunate to be going through art school, and then wandering the world, at a time when we had some of the most remarkable women artists that were gaining recognition even though if it was possibly short lived [being female & an artists, your sort of twice blessed!?]…
Cindy Sherman, Louise Bougouis, Vivienne Westwood, Stevie Nicks, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Barbara Kruger, Laurie Anderson, Jenny Holzer, Sherin Neshat, Kiki Smith, Yoko Ono, Guerrilla Girls, Lorna Simpson, Jill Sander, Zaha Hadid and power house Australian women artists Denise Fry, Pat Hoffie, Julie Rrap, Rosalie Gascoigne, Katie Pie, Linda Jackson, Destiny Deacon, Fiona Hall, Lindy Lee, Jill Orr, Elizabeth Gower, Marie Sierra, Ann-Maree Reaney, Mona Ryder, Lyn Hadley, Cate Bush, Kate Cerbrano, Jenny Morris, Deborah Conway, Chrissy Amphlett and on, and on...
I can honestly say without these women artists as a guide to what a woman can say and achieve, it gave me the ‘why’ of it - I possibly could have been derailed early on, in trying to fill prescriptions of what people wanted in art, as against, what I wanted to say with my art.
They gave strength and encouragement at a vital time in my practice, to persist with ones’ own practice – built my confidence for the values, materials and making processes of art, and hey you never know, maybe one day it may be recognised as something substantial, relevant… marketable!!... but really a woman is always going to have to fight her way into any form of official ‘art’ recognition.
Has your practice and subject matter changed over time? If so, how?
Totally, my practice evolves with each day and what that day brings to light. It responds and reacts to social, political and cultural situations, and engages with change through economy, technology, environment and the personal.
The essential understanding of art as the ‘why’ of the everyday. Mark marking as the essential construct, has remained through-out… but the subject matter, mediums, spaces used, the collaborations formed, are constantly changing… however I have remained pretty true to my use of thread, as my primary mark making material for the last twenty years or so.
It’s interesting reflecting on my making, as I find myself using almost every artform medium/method I had to take as subjects in art school; drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, ceramics and textile [even though we did not have a textile department at uni, I was always on the sewing machine since I was 8 years old, maybe younger… adjusting or remaking clothing from old clothes.
I draw with thread, however to create a drawing, sculpture or performance, it is always influenced by a concern I need to voice, this leads me to colours and all that colour theory I did in painting, then it takes me into screen printing and/or sculpture department where I experimented making stencils, moulds or 3D structures, then into the ceramics department to think releases … then I begin to draw, for hours and hours I allow the thread to make its own mark while I manipulate where it falls, what colours fall, and then textiles’ come in as I need to make sure there is enough overlap with the different colours, so that the whole piece will stay together, like a weaving… then again it’s back to ceramics where you clean up the edges, back to printmaking and photography where it gets drenched with glue and I rework the drawn threads so they are in their correct colour coded sections, and then the physical shifting of them out into the sun to dry and back inside when night falls or pending rain arrives, this rotation will be acted out over a few days until completely dry… A massive process that applies all ‘traditional art forms & methods.
It is laborious, tedious, quite lonely at times… but there is a freedom that I like in this approach to making. It is rewarding, there is a certain amount of control while the outcome is all a risk, a possible chance happening, and a new beginning when it is complete… but as in any ‘process’, some of the fun falls out of it all. – it is hard work!
What do you like most about living in the region?
I live or came to this region by chance, primarily because my partners family were from the region.
I do like the region, I love the seasonal shell changing beaches, light on the water, its calm waters, islands, parks, inland surprises such as manmade Bamboo Land, and the history of the community in our small crescent where we live. Maryborough has a crucial history for white settlement and massive early immigration with shocking indigenous consequences.
Today Maryborough has the only official memorial to indigenous people fighting for their land that is equivalent to white man’s memorial statues that are numerous around Australian and world landscapes.
I find the region, its land and seascapes very enriching, alive and possessive in a way.
I am not connected to this land, but I am drawn to it constantly, I feel it allows me a path to a possible understanding of connection to land, but I cannot say I understand it yet, but I totally believe in it.
I have truly enjoyed witnessing my son who was born and spent his early years overseas, really build a connection and love for Hervey Bay, and interestingly really connect with many Batchelor kids that are grand/greatgrand children of the kids my partner grew up with in our small hidden crescent at this end of the bay.
I was born of PR immigrant parents [in fact they only just got their Australian Citizenship 2 years ago at the age of 92!!], so to be honest I have never felt I belonged in this country and yet I have an Australian accent, I call myself Australian and officially I am Australian when I was granted citizenship at 22 years of age.
Now here I am in a small crescent in Hervey Bay I absolutely love, and that I have come to call home…. But I look out across the islands, and I feel a beckoning for beyond. Yet the comfort and hidden secret of the crescent, will I believe, remain a place I will always return to and continue this path I’ve built with its connection in/to land.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Don’t believe everything you been preconditioned with, told or read…. Be bold, inquisitive, courageous and totally open minded, travel, discuss, try, put in effort - mistakes are the path to contributing something relevant to oneself and the wider society. Never let gender, race, religion, age or politics get in the way of nurturing your basic humanity.
Family is a given, a village is the ultimate for individuals in developing what they can achieve and contribute. Women are the backbone and source of change for the better in our societies.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
It is a little out there … but I often think about what I quite often explain as ‘an obsession with thread’ when describing my approach to making, and how this could be a link to my feelings and thoughts of never feeling I belonged to this country (i.e. Australia).
That feeling of being pulled elsewhere, and then watching my own child, born in another country from here, and now dealing with the differing/varying heritages or links to particular aspects of each country - that somehow there is always a thread that leads you back to where you really are connected to – that place of origin.
It is something, that being born and living in this land called Australia has taught me, listen to the land it has cultural and healing memories and methods, far beyond any governing body, religion, economy or Chat GPT that can sustain when planning for a healthy civil society.
What is the most interesting feedback you have had about your work?
Specifically with my gold thread installation/pieces/works that are performative in nature… gold metallic polyester thread continuously unravels from a spool.
As people watch they almost become a little hypnotised I think… it is a looking/gazing process, that makes one marvel at the simple glistening line that falls and builds, fills a space, begins to spread out as these ‘mounds’ grow.
As people watch they start to speak of some aspect of memory, an occasion, a musical piece, a dance… then all sorts of relaxed conversations start up amongst the onlookers… it is almost therapeutic to watch the thread fall - drawing lines and building a form.
Possibly it is not unlike the amazement of asking ChatGPT something… and magically we have an incredible summarized, succinct version of what it was you were asking about. Wow sounds so good… but then we start to question, talk about, share, send some further queries to ChatGPT…. these responses are full of surprise and wonderment… yet then we stand back and question - is this really happening is this really true ... “but is this really art?????” a much-used response, that is probably at best a challenge to any artist and their practice.
Photo: Cody Fox