Meet the artist: Diana Terry
on scale and process
Diana Terry works in drawing, painting and sculpture to explore how art can embody thought and emotions. With a background in teaching alongside her professional art practice, she has exhibited extensively including at Merzbarn, Scotland, Kolaj Fest, New Orleans, and The Mall Gallery, London, as well as being selected for the New Light Prize Exhibition which has toured around the UK in 2024.
“While my drawings, paintings and ceramics engage with the present moment, I hold a profound interest in the depth of time and the interconnectedness of all things. I aspire to imbue my artworks with these dualities, juxtaposing the immediate with the eternal. I use to talk a lot about the everyday and the overlooked – This was my way of trying to show what is special about moment to moment awareness, that we are constantly surrounded by beauty, and that the important aspect of what I had been doing was the act of being aware. I want to reinterpret the imaginary landscapes and figures weaving a path between dreams and fantasies.
I have come to understand that what I am talking about is more mysterious than I thought – that not everything that exists, is able to appear in this space we call our reality. You cannot see it by looking. Stop looking and you will find it. If you could look backwards there it would be and I find it in a more meditative state of exploration and experimentation. It was in this state that I decided to render the noises that are in my head most of the time.
What I love about paint and clay is that they can absorb and transmit a series of thought and emotions. My work has a fictional space, an invented abstract space that holds all the contents together - but I think that anything can go into that space, from heartfelt expressive marks to deliberately fashioned self-conscious brushstrokes to intensely rendered rock surfaces. These textures are akin to precipices, cliffs, caves and quarries.”
On Scale:
I prefer to work large to the edges of my physical being. This expansiveness demands energy, focus and is totally immersive involving the whole body as it’s frame of reference. It’s why I was so enthralled by Mark Rothko’s paintings when I first saw them as a teenager but then I even liked John Martin at that time.
Now I understand the subtext of these works and have learnt to enjoy and make intimate small scale work that invite invite closer scrutiny and intimacy that encourages a more personal engagement with the artwork. It’s also a profound tool for influencing the viewer’s emotional and intellectual response the artwork creates.
But like Monet the big gestural pieces will get me in the end, so these questions are loaded. Often I depends on how I’m feeling at the time and the size of the space I’m in. I have worked outside making large expressive drawings and it’s when I’m most happy. Currently I’m hibernating.
Diana is one of the artists featured in the new collection of works available from Mura Ma Art Gallery. Find out more here.