Andee Dahlen was born in Edmonton in 84; grew up in Saskatoon. Andee has been many things in his life from musician to sioux chef but art was always present. He was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2005 while working at the yard and flagon pub as a cook. He always wanted to make his own heavy metal band to play guitar and write silly songs about nothing important. He woke up one morning and re
alized he could barley hold his guitar with his left arm; he thought he slept funny. After a few days the feeling had passed and he was able to play the guitar as bad as he could before. Some time passed and the symptoms had come back with a vengeance a few days before his band had a gig. After 2008 he had to grudging stop playing guitar due to tremors and having to switch his dominant hand from writing left handed. Everything else he seemed to do right handed anyway. It took a couple of years to get used to but cooking became the main focus. In the kitchen he liked to be called “A cook named sioux” instead of sioux chef because he never went to culinary school to get his chef papers. Everything he knew about cooking was learned by experience working with great chefs in his 15 year stint working in the same kitchen. In his own words “people want something they can recognize done really well”. His father Rey Dahlen was a talented artist and musician. After his passing in 2015 he made a deal with his brother and sister they could split all the guitars if he could take the art supplies. There was a tub of acrylic paints with oil paints in the mix and after watching many, many hours of Bob Ross’s “The Joy of Painting” Andee thought he could paint with oils as well. Being a cook and living the pub lifestyle for many years living paycheck to paycheck Andee was using whatever object would serve his painting purpose. He taped a 12” vinyl record to his table that could work as a painters palate and used it to paint a canvas. There was leftover paint on the record when the canvas was complete and after pushing the paint around a bit he decided that he had enough old scratched records to make painting records a thing.
5 years of learning his technique painting hundreds of paintings and more importantly preparing the records like a canvas. Andee was able to paint on days off to continue seeing what kind of paintings would come out of his brush that day. The thing he really liked was the ability to play with colors the same way he liked to play with flavors in cooking. After a fall at home January 29 2020 tearing his left ACL Andee was no longer able to work or walk. Getting worse over a few months, and then the pandemic hit. Listening to the news made going to a hospital a bit worrisome. When his left leg got to be 1/3 bigger then the left Andee was convinced (by the help of his Mother) to call an ambulance to bring him down the 3 flights of stairs and go to the hospital. After a 10 day stay Andee signed himself out and went back home to try and get back to painting. Andee moved to Camrose to live with his Mom in 2021 and is still on the way to walking and living better. With a bit of effort he has been able to start painting more often; wonder how and why things work like they do and seeing if there is another way. “Try and fail, try and succeed, it is all about what you can learn.”
