Website:  www.dckellystudio.com

email: diane@dckellystudio.com

ARTIST STATEMENT: My work is focused on the interaction of past and present, the living and the dead. I use encaustic paint and oils to portray the effects of death and the movement of life. I feel that loss becomes a presence within the lives of those who are grieving, and it is a reminder of life we have yet to lead, as well as a remembrance of those missed. I visit both the experiences of my life and inject the presence of death into those memories. Our society does not really know what to do with death and loss, and it is a rather isolating experience, with people passing away in sterile hospitals and moved along to equally sterile funeral parlors. Those that have lost someone are treated in a similarly isolating way.   My work is about remembering that death is a part of us as our life is, and I use images based on Hans Holbein's Dance of Death, as well as images from my own life.