Featured Artist Diana Jahns | Artsy Shark

Artist Diana Jahns explores different mediums to create vibrant and memorable imagery. Enjoy her portfolio, and see more on her website.

 

 

My art journey is marked by shifts and tangents that sometimes span many years. I’ve drawn and painted, sidestepped into sewing and weaving, returned to drawing and painting, shifted into photography and then found ways to combine drawing, painting and digital photography.

 

 

My current art making activities stem from my interest in combining traditional, “real” art making materials with digital photography image making.

 

 

I take photographs of separate painted pieces of paper. Then, I set those photos aside while I work at my art table arranging these painted pieces on a board until I have created a satisfying abstract composition. This is hands-on work and is represented by Local Language, an art consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 

 

Later I explore the photos in my computer and play with them in Photoshop to see how different combinations and other color schemes might work out. I’ve discovered that using this software is a great way to extend the experimentation that starts in my art studio.

 

 

This digital process birthed a whole body of work, several bodies of work in fact. They are very different in appearance from my work of decades earlier. You can see some of this work on my websites and Instagram, and on ArtfullyWalls.com, where reproduction prints are available.

 

 

A little over 20 years ago, I became a professional photographer, providing photography services to my customers, in particular headshots and portraits. I spend much of my time, nearly every day, editing photos in Photoshop. Running a photography business requires my full attention. But recently I’ve been able to set aside a day or two each week, to head back into my painting studio for some hands-on work. The experience of discovery and sense of freedom I find there is exciting.

 

 

My earliest memories are of making art. When I was about 6 or 7 years old, my artist/photographer grandmother gave me my first painting lessons. Later, when I was a teen, she taught me how to handle a camera so that I could document my work. She also introduced the idea of making prints of my work from my photos. I continued painting and drawing through my college years and in the years after. I did not take up photography seriously until about 20 years ago. Between the end of my college studies and up to when I became a photographer, I hand-wove and designed art-to-wear that I exhibited around the country.

 

 

After a move to Northern California, I became deeply inspired by the rural, agricultural landscape around me. I would roam the nearby fields and hills, using a digital camera to capture the views that I wanted to interpret into pastel drawings, which I did later in my studio. Over a period of about 10-12 years, my work gradually evolved to become more minimal and abstract. Soon I was experimenting with making entirely abstract work, inspired by feeling and imagination.

 

 

And this is where I am today, exploring two parallel paths–photography and art making–working from imagination and feeling.

 

Diana Jahns invites you to follow on Instagram.

 

 

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