We were lucky to catch up with Dalia Goldberg recently and have shared our conversation below.

Dalia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?

My first dollar ever earned came from a friend who thought that my art looked cool. When I told her the price for the original drawing she said that it was above her budget, but later she purchased a print of the work and it’s still hanging in her home to this day. Although it wasn’t a big sum, I was filled with gratitude for her support and felt over the moon knowing she truly connected with that piece.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Dalia Goldberg and I’m a pen and ink artist based in Austin, Texas. I make hard edge geometric abstraction drawings that capture my own experiences of the world. My drawings are made on heavy Bristol paper or illustration boards, using technical pens, India ink, acrylic inks, and professional grade markers. In my practice I combine fine-line drawing techniques with geometric shapes, constructs and patterns.

Growing up art has always been an interest of mine and I often enjoyed doodling shapes and drawing lines and patterns. However I never studied art in the traditional sense and it wasn’t until my 30’s that I decided to take my passion to a professional level.

Originally from Israel, I moved to the US in 2017 with my husband. The move brought on new adventures and adjustment challenges that influenced my art work. As a former psychology student I couldn’t help but examine and analyze the cultural differences I now saw so clearly. The dynamics of these new experiences and ideas have manifested in my art and blossomed into a distinctive voice and style, using lines, patterns and bold black geometric elements. It was then that I felt ready to share my art with the world.

My art is mostly intellectual, presenting concepts of order and clear defined ideas. I’m fascinated with the building blocks of our perception, and how we process those to understand our environment, mentally and emotionally. I explore how these impressions connect and interact with each other in shaping our view. In my work I introduce different geometrical elements to emphasize that a configuration of sensory, mental and emotional influences colors our perspective in a certain way. You could say that I am mostly interested in the WHY of the human experience – Why do we do the things that we do.
Each drawing begins with the intent of expressing a specific concept and the layout is always premeditated based on sketches. I create a grid that outlines the image I envision. This process mirrors the conceptual notion that life is built of a series of events that molds the way we view different experiences.

People often mistake my drawings for graphic software artwork, so I try and share as much of my process as possible on my social media channels. It’s important to me to show how my drawings take shape and how much thought, manual measurements and drafting goes into creating hard edge abstract work by hand.

I draw inspiration from my day to day life experiences as well as psychological phenomenas. Artistically my work is influenced and inspired by Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky and the Suprematism movement. In addition I have to note my admiration of Agnes Martin for her iconic work with the grid, and Maurits Cornelis Escher for his impossible constructs and his remarkable work in the field of optical art.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Being self-taught I entered the art industry with little knowledge or connections. I was basically clueless. I made many mistakes and wasted my time, not really knowing how to promote my work, with whom to network and where I can find the right audience and collectors for my artistic style.

Along my creative journey I found wonderful resources with the Dougherty Arts Center here in Austin, Texas, which offered occasional lectures on how to run an art business. I also join an online program with an art mentor which offered many useful resources on how to market and sell art and offered a Facebook group for artists to network. I was fortunate enough to find these wonderful resources by myself, but I do wish I could have found a local mentor or an art community early on in my creative career. I feel a mentorship can really benefit artists as they enter the art world by steering them in the right direction.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

As I was trying to navigate being an art entrepreneur, I took a few business classes, some were related to running a small business and some were specifically related to running an art business. All of them had the same message – find your niche, double down on it, and find your audience.

My artistic style tends towards black and white, abstract and geometric ink drawings and so I put all my effort into producing that type of work and promoting it. The thing is, at least from my perspective, the creative journey for artists is not linear. Sometimes we want to make something that is completely unrelated to our main media and artistic style. We make it because we think it’s cool and we just want to make it.

I was so caught up in this idea of producing only the work that was in my defined niche that I hit a creative block. I put so much pressure on myself to make drawings that fit my brand, that I forgot art was supposed to be fun. I had to take a step back from my drawings and spent some time experimenting with artistic kaleidoscope videos and working with organic and land sourced materials. It was a detour in my creative journey, but a necessary one for me. It truly helped me in getting back to that magical flow of ideas and creativity that I was missing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.daliagoldbergart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dalia.goldberg.art/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dalia.goldberg.art