My Work
The etymology for the word “work” leads down a long rabbit hole and arrives at “to do.” Creativity was a term limited for centuries to the Divine until after the Enlightenment. The root of enthusiasm comes from ancient Greek enthusiasmos or en-theos, to be filled with god.
The work of making art is a continuous exercise in learning to see: line, structure, relationship, paint qualities, and most importantly for me, color. Learning to see color completely changed my vision and my art. I became proficient. I went to graduate school but almost left, when one day the head of my department said, “You paint exceptionally well, but where is Diane?” A terrifying question!
At about the same time, I discovered a book by Madeleine L’Engle, titled Walking on Water: Reflections on Art and Faith. Its premise is this: The work knows more than you do. It comes to you from somewhere else and asks you to give it birth, like an Annunciation. If you say yes, your job then is to follow the work where it knows it needs to go. That book has become so underlined, I had to buy a new copy. It changed my life.
My experience of making art since understanding that premise has been at times one of great joy, at other times of immense fear, as the work leads me into terrifying territory that I cannot understand, except by following in blind trust. It was that faith in the work that led me to my Thesis exhibition of experiential icons. That faith that led to the experimental figurative life-size “books” that became a sculpture garden to center Lenox Park in Atlanta, its celebratory opening accompanied with a concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. It is that faith in the work that has led me on a journey from those experiential icons to abstract puzzle pieces to abstract landscapes back to representational images that are based on the infinite minute pieces of reality, all in a deep awe of the mystery we cannot see.
My work may appear to be widely differing. But each piece, each path, each seeming diversity is only another step in following the work in one long journey of wholeness—led by creative enthusiasm. And faith in the work.
