Artist Statement

Visual Abstraction

As Webb investigates a narrative she teases out visual aspects of a concept and reaches for the most effective media—paint, paper, fibre, print, encaustic, ink, or found objects to express her ideas. This is why you will see a wide variety of styles, materials and approaches in the work as the artist pursues each narrative. Webb finds that producing new works is a kind of dance, a communication between ideas, technique, materials, and finally the viewer.

Most recently Webb has been exploring the idea of transformation by focusing on the detritus cast aside from this process. Inspired by milkweed pods, cocoons and chrysalises, across, and other natural objects she created a process that uses natural silk fibers to create paper that is then molded into various vessels and forms creates each etherial yet solid artifact allowing the imagination to consider what inhabited these remnants and what may have emerged.

Other current works include an abstract collage based series on migrations. Using ink on various papers and fabrics applied with artist-made brushes, sewn with thread and dotted with ink, the artist examines the human (and other species) practice of migrations—traversing the terrain from one place to another.

Born in Maine, Webb is the middle generation of three generations of visual, literary, healing, and performing artists. She holds a BA and an MFA from Lesley University. Dianne K. Webb maintained a studio in Houston, TX for more than a decade and is now producing work in Studio 2 at Running With Scissors, in Portland, ME.

Webb’s work has been exhibited across the U.S. and in Canada and her work can be found in several private collections across the country.