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Diana Dean Exhibit
Aug 22 It's the feast-day of the goddess Diana on August 6th. What a fitting day to launch a showing of Diana Dean's work.
Since moving to Salt Spring, painter and sculptor Dean has created art on a daily basis, honing her instinct for colour and form while delving deeply into archetypal themes. In collaboration with Starfish Gallery, Dean is bringing some of these rare treasures out of her studio. Works spanning 25 years will be on display, including still lifes, landscapes, portraits, and sculptures in bronze.
"Diana's work is timeless," says Starfish gallery owner Andrea Collins. "Her paintings from the 1980's are as contemporary now as they were then. They have an energy and power that is transformative — her paintings stay with you."
Diana Dean has attracted an international following over the years through her passionate mingling of the familiar with the symbolic. She portrays everyday life — cooking, sharing meals, a family outing to the beach — using a rich tapestry of symbols and placing her characters in classical costume and poses.
Her works sit in prestigious collections such as the Canada Council Art Bank, Confederation Centre Museum, and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario. Many of the paintings in the show have recently been returned to Salt Spring from Toronto. "These beautiful works of Diana's have finally come home to Salt Spring," says Collins.
Dean's work explores interiors and exteriors: the landscape of the soul, and the landscape around her. Bringing her scrupulous artistry and soulful empathy to bear on activist causes led Dean to go to go to Clayoquot Sound, during the summer protests of 1993. She went as part of a delegation of artists who came to witness, and protect, the forest.
Evolving from Dean's original pencil sketches done at the site of the Clayoquot demonstrations came a mural sized oil painting entitled "Clayoquot — The Morning of the Demonstration." The 6x8 foot painting records her first impressions in the early morning light after travelling by bus through the night.
A work evocative of the scope and vision of Diego Rivera's political murals, "Clayoquot" captures a catalyzing moment in the B.C. environmental movement. Part lament, part commemoration, the centre of the painting features a man being dragged away by police officers, while around him protesters hold up placards. One of them seems to touch the rising sun: 'there's hope', he seems to say, 'in the midst of this denigration.' The backdrop is a stunning rendition of the hills of Clayoquot Sound, the mountains depicted by Dean in the shape of a woman's profile. It's as though the divine earth mother herself is present in her composition.
The timing of the unveiling of this piece is opportune. This spring, Canadian forest industry and environmental groups signed the world's largest conservation agreement applying to an area twice the size of Germany. Dean's painting portrays the efforts and struggles of all involved to help bring about this agreement.
"The painting is really a piece of our social history," says Collins, who was also at the Clayoquot demonstrations.
"There was a lot of ground lost at Clayoquot, but this new legislation proves that, in the long run, all of us who participated did have an impact."
"We might have lost the battle, but we won the war," says Collins.
While the majesty of the Clayoquot piece is the show's centre-piece, smaller portraits, still lifes, and landscapes will draw viewers into more intimate spaces.
One of the portraits in the show, "Woman Sewing, or A Moment's Reflection", is reminiscent of Vermeer in terms of intimacy, and detail. Dean blends the sacred and the mundane: she shows off a renaissance flair in the finely wrought rendering of the table cloth, yet the machine the woman is sewing on is of contemporary design.
Dean uses the same mixture to transform common spaces on Salt Spring Island into what feel like mythic realms. Another painting in the show, entitled "Fernwood Dock", features a bohemian woman, in a renaissance style tunic, walking up the familiar red dock on North Beach road. A Mona Lisa smile plays on the woman's lips: the viewer is left wondering...who is this woman? where is she coming from? Where is she going? Is she from the past or the present? While Dean's characters are enigmatic, her use of saturated primary colours is unrestrained and joyful.
Her intimate still lifes are highly decorative and ardently collected. A plate of figs, a bouquet with sheafs of wheat, porcelain jugs: these everyday items take on luminous life under Dean's patient brush. These are the works of a master painter at the peak of her powers.
After seeing Dean's painting of Fulford valley, drenched in evening sunshine, you'll never pass the little white church and gaze up at Mt. Maxwell without feeling that somehow you have entered a storybook. Dean's brush touches down and graces this island with her magic.
Starfish Gallery's Diana Dean show launches August 6th, with an opening reception from 6-8. The public is warmly welcomed to come and experience the work of a true visionary. The gallery is located at 1108 Grace Point Square, and owner Andrea Collins can be reached at 250-537-4425.
- Starfish Gallery & Studio Address: 1108-115 Fulford Ganges Rd, Grace Point Square Salt Spring Island BC V8K 1T9
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250-537-4425
