Diana Terry Greater Manchester, United Kingdom
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For me, humanity is the starting point of art. Drawing in all its meanings is fundamental to my practice as it enables a conversation between the idea and myself. Moving interchangeably through drawing, painting, collage and sculpture, I explore the narrative between humanity and the natural environment. I have created a body of work showing how returning to making can inform a sense of place.

What I love about painting is that it embodies a series of thought and emotions. It's all there on the canvas as a record. I can add and remove paint at will. It doesn’t matter about my mood because its all useful. I tend to improvise what I do on the canvas. I have a vague roadmap in mind, but usually have to abandon it pretty sharpish.

I use canvas on wooden stretchers, prepared with a couple of coats of acrylic primer. I then paint the canvas a flat colour in acrylic paint. Acrylic is a good base for oil colours. It provides an even, unabsorbent surface, whereas oils absorb other oils at different rates. I use oil paint for all the brushstrokes and drawing - this is because oil paint is so flexible that I can adjust what I'm doing almost endlessly.

Oil paint is the most fantastically malleable substance like clay, oil paint remains wet long enough for endless changes of mind, and because of the way the pigment is held in the oil, it is beautifully luminescent. Clay and oil paint have chunky, buttery qualities so I can use similar skills with the palette knife in both materials.

I also use etching which is a very tactile medium relying as it does on mark making and acid etching. I use the process very freely discovering an excitement in the printing that compliments the vagaries of the clay and paint. It also connects me to previous artists that have used strong light and dense blacks to great effect.

Source imagery is literally on my doorstep, but I’m still hooked on Victorian landscape traditions especially Paterson’s and William Stott’s use of paint to describe weather with their scale, dramatic use of light and shade. I like to use these to tell the narrative of the moors throughout the seasons including the recent wildfires.

At my studio I keep books, catalogues and magazines about art, architecture and design, such as Architecture Record and Art&Design an out-of-print interiors magazines, and an exhibition catalogue catalogue for Modern Houses in England by Maxwell Fry, British early modernist architect.

Brutalist buildings sit alongside books about Expressionist painters Anselm Keifer, Lee Krasner, even Freidrich. They are surrounded by collections of human beings represented as masks, mystics and fertility icons. Alongside on my shelves are collections of Jewelery and associated catalogues.

Nordic Noir television programmes and Chinese contemporary art seem unlikely combinations but I found that when studying landscape traditions at my residency at the Paper Gallery, Manchester that there was a common theme. Artists like Wu Chi Tsug explored the textures of mountain terrains the flow of rivers and waters or celebrating the quiet beauty found in nature. I am fortunate enough to be able to access the University of Salford collection and that of the CFCCA in Manchester.

The way I make paintings reflects the way I experience the world, and what I'm like as a person. I think this is inevitable. I have never wanted to limit myself to one or two kinds of mark-making - I find it exciting and challenging to find different ways of using paint, both by looking at art history, and through the process of using paint itself. I value this versatility.

My paintings have a fictional space, an invented abstract space that holds all the contents together - but I think that anything can go into that space, from heartfelt expressive marks to deliberately fashioned self-conscious brushstrokes to intensely rendered rock surfaces. The textures are akin to maintain precipices, cliffs and quarries.

Just because I'm able to do lots of different things in paint it doesn't mean I don't mean it. The paintings are not simply an exercise in cool irony, they're a sincere attempt to make sense of the world and the joy and despair I feel at being alive. I want to reinterpret the imaginary landscapes of our ancestors. I want to make paintings that are surprise, excite and engage and that have something new to add to the history of painting.

Diana Terry July 2022

Artwork

Deep Time, Ceramic, 2022, £360

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For sale

Cotton Tops SOLD, Oil on board, 2017, £450

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Volcanic Landscape SOLD, Oil on deep canvas, 2016, £600

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Chew Hill SOLD, Oil on gesso, 2017, 500

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Himalayan Range Series , Etching overprinted with Chinese ink, 2017, £250 framed

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Clough SoLD, Oil on Canvas, 2019, £650

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Tree in Wall SOLD, Oils on canvas, 2019, £650

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Storm SOLD, Oils on canvas, 2019, £450

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Coast, Oils on canvas, 2019, £450

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Projects and exhibitions

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Land Marks

29/10/2021 — 19/03/2022

Land Marks was a project funded by Arts Council England about the quarries in West Yorkshire. It toured four galleries in the area over a period of eighteen months. The work interacted with the landscape by recording the activity that occurred in the quarries some of which have been rewilded.

Dean Clough Gallery, Gallery Oldham, The Civic Barnsley, Globe Art Studios, West Yorkshire Details

Wirral Society of Art

02/08/2019

Regular exhibitions as a member of WSA.

The Williamson, Birkenhead, Merseyside, Wirral, Merseyside Details

Royal Society of British Artists

21/01/2018 — 31/01/2018

Open Call to be exhibited with the members of RSBA.

Mall Galleries, London Details

Permanent collection

01/08/2016 — 18/08/2019

My work was bought by the gallery for their permanent collection.

Gallery Oldham, Oldham Details
Interested in
Art Walk/TrailCommissionContemporary art fairExhibitionJournal/PublicationMentoringResidencyWorkshop
Media
Art writingCeramicsDrawingPaintingPrintmaking
Other keywords
AbstractEnvironmentEthnographicExperimentalFeminismFigurativeIdentityLandscapeMemory