Diane Keane Art
About
Welcome to my website. Here you will see images of my best creative work. My primary medium for self-expression is mixed-media assemblage boxes. I also make cut & paste paper collages, and occasionally, I paint. I am also a classically trained calligrapher.
Below, my Biography and Artist’s Statement will give you an idea of who I am, and how I got that way.
BIOGRAPHY
I was born and raised in Turtle Creek, PA, not far from Pittsburgh. I attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh as a graphic design major but did not graduate. In the 1980s, I began exhibiting assemblage boxes and hand-made paper collages and cast-paper pieces at various venues around Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania. I worked as a free-lance commercial artist and calligrapher after obtaining a certificate from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 1982.
From early 1991 through 1999 I lived in as a military spouse in Germany and continued to pursue my art while working a civilian office job with the U.S. Army. I exhibited work in Mannheim, Germany and London, England. I returned to the Pittsburgh area in 2000 and spent most of the next decade as a busy home-owner, care-giver to my elderly mother, and full-time office employee (the graphic arts field having gone digital during my absence.)
In April of 2010 I began a collage-a-day project to honor my 60th year. I created a blog, Collagitation, now mostly abandoned, to post my collages online. Prior to initiating a website, I posted work mainly on Instagram (dianekeane6790), and continue to do so. I am a member of Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Society of Artists, as well as the Calligraphy Guild of Pittsburgh.
I retired in 2017 to devote myself to art-making.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Much of my art over the years can trace its source to my Roman Catholic upbringing, which has left me with both positive and negative memories. The architecture and ambiance of the huge, immigrant-built church of my childhood (rather than religious dogma) offered my first experience of awe: the soaring pillars in a vast space, heavenly music, incense rising in scented clouds, the still mystery of life-sized statues and the magic of flickering candle flames. For this initiation into the beauty of mystery I will always be grateful.
I love making assemblage boxes because they can recapture for me that sense of magical space even at a miniature scale. De Chirico noted that “every object has two aspects: one…which we see nearly always…and the other, which is spectral and metaphysical…” Thus each element in a work carries its own charge of familiarity and mystery, combining and interacting to create new reverberations in the mind. Assemblage also satisfies my urge to make things, to “create something that feels familiar…even though it doesn’t exist” as artist Polly Morgan put it so well.
Mystery is at the heart of religion and I feel it is also at the heart of the human experience, in spite of our never-ending attempts to define, judge, conquer and control. I think losing sight of this essential mystery and our place within it has led to many undesirable results, including the historic suppression of women and others, and now, the degradation of the planet. It takes imagination, not dogma, to be comfortable with mystery, to accept that there are things we cannot understand. And it is mystery that fires the artistic imagination: What would that look like? How can I make something to express this? Creation is the only way to find out. Perhaps that’s what the great Creator had in mind?
Below, my Biography and Artist’s Statement will give you an idea of who I am, and how I got that way.
BIOGRAPHY
I was born and raised in Turtle Creek, PA, not far from Pittsburgh. I attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh as a graphic design major but did not graduate. In the 1980s, I began exhibiting assemblage boxes and hand-made paper collages and cast-paper pieces at various venues around Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania. I worked as a free-lance commercial artist and calligrapher after obtaining a certificate from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 1982.
From early 1991 through 1999 I lived in as a military spouse in Germany and continued to pursue my art while working a civilian office job with the U.S. Army. I exhibited work in Mannheim, Germany and London, England. I returned to the Pittsburgh area in 2000 and spent most of the next decade as a busy home-owner, care-giver to my elderly mother, and full-time office employee (the graphic arts field having gone digital during my absence.)
In April of 2010 I began a collage-a-day project to honor my 60th year. I created a blog, Collagitation, now mostly abandoned, to post my collages online. Prior to initiating a website, I posted work mainly on Instagram (dianekeane6790), and continue to do so. I am a member of Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Society of Artists, as well as the Calligraphy Guild of Pittsburgh.
I retired in 2017 to devote myself to art-making.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Much of my art over the years can trace its source to my Roman Catholic upbringing, which has left me with both positive and negative memories. The architecture and ambiance of the huge, immigrant-built church of my childhood (rather than religious dogma) offered my first experience of awe: the soaring pillars in a vast space, heavenly music, incense rising in scented clouds, the still mystery of life-sized statues and the magic of flickering candle flames. For this initiation into the beauty of mystery I will always be grateful.
I love making assemblage boxes because they can recapture for me that sense of magical space even at a miniature scale. De Chirico noted that “every object has two aspects: one…which we see nearly always…and the other, which is spectral and metaphysical…” Thus each element in a work carries its own charge of familiarity and mystery, combining and interacting to create new reverberations in the mind. Assemblage also satisfies my urge to make things, to “create something that feels familiar…even though it doesn’t exist” as artist Polly Morgan put it so well.
Mystery is at the heart of religion and I feel it is also at the heart of the human experience, in spite of our never-ending attempts to define, judge, conquer and control. I think losing sight of this essential mystery and our place within it has led to many undesirable results, including the historic suppression of women and others, and now, the degradation of the planet. It takes imagination, not dogma, to be comfortable with mystery, to accept that there are things we cannot understand. And it is mystery that fires the artistic imagination: What would that look like? How can I make something to express this? Creation is the only way to find out. Perhaps that’s what the great Creator had in mind?
Art Is Not What You See, But What You Make Others See.
Contact
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
