DIANNA KELLERMAN

I started my artistic adventures when I was very young. From loving the feeling of mud, making mud pies, and watching my artist Aunt work, forming the most amazing shapes from lumps of clay, enamelling, drawing, and painting.

At 4 my grandmother started to teach me to knit. A few years later my mum started teaching me to crochet hence my love of textures came into being.

Embroidery gave me the start to making pictures using different media. I combined threads with leaves, beads, old clothes torn into pieces to work with.

Then there was drawing, another early art love, and I still do pencil artworks.

Pencils gave me my start with colour.

Adding it all together with natural materials, I started weaving with ivy, vines I don’t always know the names of, palm and raffia. I always loved collecting shells, leaves and other bits from our holidays when I was a child, and my studio is still brimming with “bits foraged”!

I started weaving when I was in my twenties and the first workshop was so relaxing, sitting under the gums in the shade, chatting in a women’s circle. Inspiration comes from within from random thoughts, feelings, what’s going on in the world, from nature to man-made. Beauty is in the way we perceive, in the eye of the beholder, and even when something may at first appear ugly, change your perspective and suddenly it takes on a new meaning.

I was mostly self-taught until the last six years. Having never done a formal educational course in the arts I wanted instruction and my desire to learn and explore has never diminished, only grown.

Upcycling or reusing materials combined with paints, inks, natural materials….these aspire to be combined with the thoughts, feelings and experiences of life, along with the beauty of nature, the senses are to be appreciated.

www.instagram.com/diannakellerman_arts/