Patience | medium: Drawing | material: pen on paper | size: 42 x 28 cm | production date: February 2014
In first instance my work evolves intuitively. From then it becomes a dance between my brain, my body and my intuition. My imagination and my love for research bring me deeper and deeper into my subject and so my one work becomes an inspiration for many more. Always making sure I’m a channel as best as I can, which means me getting out of the way. My work can then flow and grow from the source within, oftentimes telling me something I need to know. This way the truly full meaning of a work only becomes clear to me weeks, months or years after creation. The story, the way, woven or stitched, moulded, drawn or painted on and into the substance before my eyes.
This drawing ‘Patience’ for instance taught me that I was going to need a lot of patience in life, tons of it, as much patience as a mother bird, her baby birds and a bull have to have combined. You see, a mother needs lots of patience to raise her babies and kids want everything now and everything quickly, so they need to learn to have patience too. As for the bull, well, he is simply offering up his back and his paddock for this all to happen, so his level of patience has to be way up there.
Diana van der Harst is a multidisciplinary artist whose journey has resulted in the creation of an ever evolving Leftover Universe where Tender Time Sighs. While she has a focus on textile art, she also uses painting, drawing, ceramics, sculpture, photography and writing to seek and tell her story. Her creations originate from a meeting between inner and outer travels, from studying things up-close to things far away, from observing the small to observing the vast; a process of constantly shifting focus, a movement much like breathing. Tender Time Sighs; breathing life into a Leftover Universe, showing us traces of transformation and encounters with animate and inanimate beings. Drawing from her own experiences, inspired by life itself, characters have developed who share their meetings and findings along the way. Diana’s work is poetic, contemporary, intuitive, contemplative, intimate, emotional, whimsical, spiritual, narrative and embodies a magical realism.
Diana was born and raised in The Netherlands before she moved to Australia. It is in The Netherlands where Diana had her main art education and where she started exhibiting her works back in 2004. During a masterclass in textile design in The Netherlands in 2007 she was invited to exhibit her art in Tokyo, Japan. Since that exhibition she had 4 solo exhibitions and several work periods in Kyoto, Japan. Exhibiting for nearly 20 years now she showed her works in The Netherlands, Antwerp/Belgium, Melbourne, Perth, Tokyo and Kyoto/Japan. Diana is now focusing on her upcoming solo exhibition, during which she will be giving workshops as well as undertake an artist-in-residency. She is one of the participating artists in her community that opens up her home studio for the public to come and visit, an initiative that is held two weekends a year as part of an Art Trail. Several other projects are in development and she is open for commissions.
Email: leftoveruniverse@gmail.com | Website: http://www.leftoveruniverse.com | Instagram: dhyana_in_a_leftover_universe
Leftover Universe 