Diana Clauss

I’m originally from Philadelphia where I received my BFA in Fibers/Textiles from Moore College of Art and Design. I relocated to Arizona, where I received my MFA in Painting/Drawing from Arizona State University and have had a working studio in the Phoenix area for over twenty years.

​

Last year I moved my entire studio to The Sea Ranch. I traded the austere vistas and mountains of the Sonoran Desert for the ocean and fog of the North Coast, yet my source of inspiration remains the same. For me, landscape - the space above and below the horizon line offers a path for a contemplative or introspective gaze - not necessarily a descriptive one.

 

I work primarily in encaustic and oil. These materials allow me to build up many layers of paint and medium to achieve a depth of color, luminosity and transparency or impasto-like tactile surfaces. Often my love of textiles calls and I’ll begin an oil painting with a layer of silk, or in the case of encaustic, fuse layers of brocade or gauze into the still hot beeswax. 

I rely on this hands-on physical engagement with the materials to provide a glimpse or direction for each painting. The back and forth between a shifting illusion of spatial depth and actual dimensional surface is used to invite the senses to navigate the enclosures and expanses of the visual terrain.

 

Each painting contains the record of what remains after a circuitous process of applying and subtracting combined with the daily contemplations in the studio that seep into each layer.