Diane Wesman

I grew up in a working laboratory of conservation. My family taught me two things: first to love nature, to see and protect its beauty, and second to be involved in the community and to work to make the world a better place for everyone. These family traditions form my artistic voice. My father taught me to see the spider’s web in the spruce tree, the moon’s reflection on the lake, the bird’s wing prints in the snow. Everything, tiny, huge, it doesn’t matter, he sees the beauty in all of it and he passed that fascination with looking on to me.

I draw and paint because I love the physical world. I love the play of light on an object—branch, tree or hill—the shadows objects make are the stuff that demands I take pencil or brush in hand. I want to show the twist of the stem, the bend of a branch, the elegant curve of a petal.
My hope is that by bringing the eye (both mine and those that see my work) to the subject I can also bring the mind of the viewer to a greater appreciation of this world.
My artistic process, with few exceptions, is to work from life. Most work is on paper, some on vellum. I use graphite, watercolor, gouache, crayon, colored pencil and pastel. Occasionally I do huge mixed medial pieces incorporating metal with acrylic on board. In addition to paintings and drawings, my work includes artists books, journals, wearable art and handmade paper constructions.

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DIANE WESMAN'S WORK