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Asta Dale

Asta Dale

Asta Dale had her primary and secondary schooling in Germany during and after the Second World War. She completed training as a nurse in Hamburg, Germany and emigrated to London, England, where she pursued postgraduate studies for State Registered Nursing. She lived in London for eight years before relocating permanently to Calgary in 1966. She started drawing and painting in London and continued in Calgary, earning a diploma from the Alberta College of Art & Design (formerly Alberta College of Art) in 1982, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary in 1989. Since then she has participated in workshops at Emma Lake and in residency programs at the Atlin Arts Centre in northern British Columbia.

Dale frequently uses exclusively recycled materials to call attention to environmental destruction caused by industrialization, urbanization, and consumerism. Her work has exhibited across Canada in solo and group shows and can be found in private, corporate, and public collections, including Shell Oil and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. She has held membership with the Red Deer Art Society since 1991, and with the Alberta Society of Artists since 2011. In 2016, at the age of 82, Dale became a founding member of Calgary-based painting collective Group 9. Their first exhibition, The Persistence of Vision, opened at the Collectors’ Gallery of Art (Calgary) in spring 2017, and they are planning future shows in Canada, the U.S., and Italy.