Diane Davies is an artist who graduated with a Bachelor in Fine Arts and a Minor in English at Nipissing University, North Bay, Ontario in 2019. She is originally from Shelburne, Ontario, where you may have been to a rowdy fiddling competition and then left without remembering the town’s name, but memorizing its charming allure, canola fields, and stormy skies. She currently lives in North Bay, Ontario. Davies is a practicing artist and an occasional teacher with the Near North District School Board.
Davies’ artwork explores themes of humour, personal narrative, and a reverence for nature and whimsy. Davies has been collecting leaves, tree bark, and lichen from her adventures to include and weave into her art practice. Natural elements, like found objects, offer a three-dimensional, multimedia component to her work. Davies understands that the natural world is delicate, she never takes living matter, always items that have fallen to the ground or submerged in water.
Davies’ work is inspired by E.H Shepard’s “Winnie the Pooh” illustrative style, and the curious creations of Salvador Dali. She is inspired by stories of her family, nuanced interactions, and silent reflections of the day’s thought pattern. Davies creates her work using collage, watercolour, brush markers, micron pens, acrylic paints, and found materials. Davies explores both contemporary style and media, as well as traditional media like oil painting and graphite drawings. Davies explored and continues to explore textile work using embroidery and sewing. She used these media as well as performance in her culminating thesis exhibition titled “The Deity Project”, 2019.