Awaiting One’s Presence | mixed media painting | acrylic paint and paper cut on paper | 28 x 20 cm | May 2014
“When I was little I used to take my rubber boat to the river not far from our house. I spent wonderful hours sitting in my boat, floating on the water surrounded by ducks. I didn’t row, I wasn’t going anywhere, I was simply enjoying floating, enjoying the sound of the rippling water beneath me. The insects, light as a feather, attracted by the orange colour of my rubber boat, landed softly and momentarily on the surface. The friendly presence of the ducks and waving grass on the banks of the river, a river that was moving me slowly towards a shore. It was such a lovely place to just be, a real sanctuary”.
Years after painting my empty, orange, rubber boat I discovered that arriving at The Empty Boat is actually a Tao concept the great Chinese philosopher Chiang Tzu (Zhuang Zhou or Zhuangzi) wrote about and it is also a subject talked about within Zen Buddhism.
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 