BRESLER RESIDENCY: Diane Szczepaniak
Diane Szczepaniak, work in progress, wood, 2019.
In her paintings and sculptures, Diane Szczepaniak strives to move away from a human-centered world, into one populated entirely by objects composed of form and space. She refers to her artworks as places where the forms are free of the meanings we assign to objects around us. Rather than fulfilling human needs, these forms exist independently and come alive on their own. The forms are entities of color and light that can hold and reveal the essence of being.
About the artist: Since the early 1980’s, Diane has been driven by the study of the dynamics of form. Initially focused on drawing and sculpting the figure, she worked through these media to an understanding of the physicality of objects in space, which has remained with her throughout her career and brought her directly to abstraction. Using this understanding of space as an inspiration, she creates paintings by layering translucent washes of paint on paper and canvas, in a process that reflects her early sculptural training. Inversely, her glass sculptures are a 3-dimensional representation of her painting process where each sheet of hand-blown colored glass represents a layer of paint. In both cases, each additional layer of color changes the whole.
Diane presents annual workshops exploring color, perception, and space with Dudley House at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is a member of the board of the Washington Sculptors Group. For more information about her numerous exhibitions, awards and collections, visit her event page at www.dianeszczepaniak.com.
About the Fleur and Charles Bresler Residency: In honor of VisArts patrons, Fleur and Charles Bresler, VisArts invites applications and proposals from local, national, and international artists for a four month residency at VisArts at Rockville. This residency provides a unique opportunity for a dynamic individual artist or collaborative artist team to create a new body of work, evolve an existing body of work, or develop a project in a stimulating, supportive environment. Studio space is provided free of charge. The residency encourages interaction, dialogue and exploration both within the VisArts artist community and the larger Rockville community as well. The residency offers the gift of time and space to three artists and/or collaborative artist teams each year to experiment and realize new work. The current Bresler Resident Artists present their work in a solo exhibition at VisArts.
Learn more about the Fleur And Charles Bresler Residency.