DYANA WELLS
One window into life that we call painting draws heavily on the subconscious, asking and answering questions for both the painter and the viewer.
Making art for me is a always an unknown journey back to somewhere dark that is oozing and jostling for the light. A place where incipient significance slowly emerges from the symbols and repetition and the rhythm of things. Where colour has its own determined way.
STUDIO
Interested people can contact me and view more of my work.
Dyana has completed the Diploma of Creativity with the Learning Connection in Wellington. She has also taken courses at the Waikato Society of Arts.
She exhibits regularly with RaglanArt and currently has work in the Raglan Old School and Raglan’s new iHub information centre alongside the Museum.
RaglanArt also holds mini exhibitions every month at the Community House meeting room, down the path from the Raglan Town Hall and Raglan Radio.
“At the moment my paintings and pictures are my teachers as I learn about the impact of contrast, and colour and shape. I am learning the art of listening to my work and letting myself be guided by the meaning that wants to come through.
“I am learning about myself through my art.”
A-Meeting-of-Earth-and-Water-2-850pxd
Dyana-Emergence-Cellular-850pxd-$450
Dyana-Emergence-Materialisation-700pxd-$550
Dyana-Emergence-Surfacing-850pxd-$550
Dyana-Family-700pxd
Dyana-Fire-Making-a-Connection-700pxd
Dyana-Fire-Refuge-of-Earth-700pxd
Dyana-Fire-Transmutation-of-Love-850pxd
Dyana-Meeting-of-Earth-and-Water-1-850pxd
Dyana-The-Human-Heart-850pxd
Dyana-This-is-our-World-700pxd
For me making art is the place to forget the pictures of language and go somewhere else, where experience is again potent and luminous and special, maybe the way it is for children.
I notice certain motifs keep repeating, I notice my work is about rhythm and energy and the human journey. I am a sailor and for me a boat sailing the ocean embodies it all.
Making art for me is a way of listening for undercurrents of interest, and having a conversation with the emerging shapes, that I hardly know but need to befriend. It is an exploration into how I create stories without words.
I have explored many different mediums. One of my favourites is encaustic wax, because it is so alchemical and messy, and smelly. Its unpredictability inspires and crushes me. Isn’t life the same. I love the sticky brilliance of printmaking and the subtlety of acrylic painting. I love the modelling potential of supersculpy and the tactile earthiness of ceramics. Like a child I want it all.
I moved back to Raglan three years ago to be with my children and grandchildren. My father grew up on the Rangitahi farm until the Great Depression. My grandfather then built a house on Wi Neera street and our family came to visit and stay weekends and holidays. As a child I was tumbled and planted right down deep in the black sands, the dunes and the wild sea of Raglan.
It is good to be developing into an artist here, because there is so much of that child in my work.
