Diane Englander's Gallery

Statement: I hope to produce spaces for reflection and relative tranquility, the completed work an antidote to anxiety, without devolving into the soporific. Navigating that slippery slope, in fact, is my biggest challenge: to make paintings and drawings that provide a sense of meditative calm, but with sufficient dissonance so they can't be dismissed as utterly serene or fully resolved. I approach that challenge using relatively simple elements -- mulberry paper, raw canvas, heavy watercolor paper, thinned acrylics, and water-soluble pencils -- and few colors that in combination produce a surprising range of nuance while avoiding the gratuitously complicated. I am usually creating a relationship between a subtly complex background and a somewhat crude, minimal line, with the conflict between the two producing an animating tension without crossing into discord. This rhythmic interplay generates a sense of space that allows relatively small pieces to achieve an expansiveness beyond their actual size.