JULIA WEST, DEVON
About The Artist
Diane Bedser’s work are abstracted experiences of things noticed in the world around her. They are about movement, about energy, about essence. Diane absorbs social interactions, colours, crumbling walls, the shadows cast by buildings. The artist allows these visual interactions to wash over her, bringing them back to her studio to disgorge them thoughtfully on her canvas. She explains that she doesn’t often know what she is trying to communicate until the work is finished, until the paint has articulated it to her.
This way of rearticulating the world around Diane has come from her experience as a contemporary dance choreographer. The artist would take a stimulus of a painting, a vase, or a piece of music and abstract the movement from the object, internalising its essence before metamorphosing it into dance, which is a process she has readapted to painting. Diane is highly attuned to the abstracted forms or movement divined from a scene, moment, or object, stating: ‘It’s like observing a person’s body language. You pick up certain things from a wordless interaction, generating a certain feeling or empathy.’ Therefore, the marks, the colour, the composition of her paintings all combine and interact to characterise that which she has absorbed externally.
Her paintings come about through a considered process of refinement and addition. Diane is not afraid of the blank canvas, considering it as a portal to opportunity. Her first marks act as a kind of sketch for the painting that is about to begin, however these are done with paint and do not adhere to any strict sense of composition. They are then entirely obliterated with the following and numerous layers of paint. Diane enjoys building up a paintings texture, it’s objectness. She uses a solvent and facturing to scrape through and pile up wet paint, layering on thick impasto layers of paint and glazes when the surface is dry. This lends her paintings a desiccated quality which reveals their previous iterations. How they were built, their prehistory and geology of germination, is laid bare.
Diane’s colour is based on an instinctive process. She will often delight and luxuriate in mixing a palette, before changing it entirely on the canvas once the painting starts to articulate itself. For Diane sees her process as a conversation with the canvas and it is only when all these elements, her colour, form, surface, and line have harmonised that the painting’s content reveals itself to the artist. What the painting communicates is often personal revelations about Diane herself: ‘it’s a two-way relationship. It tells me something about who I am.’
By Kate Reeve-Edwards, Art Writer, Cultural Capital Arts
Biography
Diane worked as a Headteacher before leaving education to live abroad and develop her passion for painting. She embraced her creative nature from an early age, expressing herself to find her creative voice through diverse art forms, but her love of painting has been her focus for the past 25 years.
Her work draws on the creative process she learned while studying dance choreography during her B.ed (Hons) degree.
Diane Bedser’s work are abstracted experiences of things noticed in the world around her. They are about movement, about energy, about essence. Diane absorbs social interactions, colours, crumbling walls, the shadows cast by buildings. The artist allows these visual interactions to wash over her, bringing them back to her studio to disgorge them thoughtfully on her canvas. She explains that she doesn’t often know what she is trying to communicate until the work is finished, until the paint has articulated it to her.
Over the years Diane has received instruction from several accomplished artists including the esteemed Robin Child. On his courses she has analysed past masters and 20th century artists such as Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron and Richard Diebenkorn. The intensive study has informed her work, bringing a greater awareness, and acting as an agent for change.
Galleries & Exhibitions
Diane successfully exhibited her work abroad. Her paintings have been shown several times by the Society of Women Artists at the Mall Galleries, London and she is a member of the Buckinghamshire Art Society.
Galleries
Ardquin Fine Art
Hazlemere Surrey
Berkeley Gallery
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire
Selected Exhibitions
The Mall Galleries
London
Buckinghamshire Fine Art Gallery
Aylesbury
Obsidian Art
Stoke Mandeville
The Coach House Gallery
Great Missenden
Upstairs Gallery
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire
Buckinghamshire Art Society
Buckinghamshire
TESTIMONIALS
Contact Us
If you would like more details about a painting or information on delivery options, please use the contact form or email address below to get in touch.