In some images, I have used the frame of the canvas to provide the boundaries: The ethereal state of being 'there' and the state of 'reality' represented by the wall. In other images, I have played with the squared-off spaces to create the timeline of painting: The raw linen exposed in some places, coupled with the finished statement in layers of paint, which creates an open-ended conversation. The viewer is fully engaged. You fill in the blanks, create, and step directly into the frame and into your own experience.

I like using the reference to the kimono because of the lack of relationship a kimono has to the human body. By design, the Kimono depicts artwork independent of the body shape. Flowers, patterns, landscapes exist on a separate picture plane. Kimonos cloak the body creating visuals that soar into the sky with birds, meander through forests and waterfalls and create the illusion of space around the human body. How different this is to western dress. Short of Hawaiian shirts, our culture abounds with tailored, fitted skin-hugging visual information about the body underneath, from notched belts to lacy trim and lapels that reveal their age through their width. Eastern society found it more important to ignore the surface of the body while the west obsessed with the figure. On one, hand diaphanous, transcendental, and intellectual on the other, our worldly and secular notions.

Expressed in color, texture, and depth are moments of joy, passion, and reverie: These are words, which directly connect to my own feeling of painting. It is my hope that viewing the work might trigger in others the sense of floating in that space.

Diane Pfister    « shrink