The Full Story
Diane Lilli's Journey into Art
As a budding artist finishing high school in the mid 1970’s Diane lacked the ability to support formal art training and pay the rent. Opting for survival, she applied her creativity to food working toward a Chef's certificate, and later in the development of local food value chains and farm to school. She began creating her art again in earnest at the age of sixty-three while still active in the workforce.
To this day Diane continues her work to connect small farms to school lunch menus by day and paints by moonlight at night. If you ask her which of the two, she loves the most, she’ll give you a devious smile and reply with a swift flick of intense color from her favorite palette knife onto a blank canvas.
On a mission to find balance for the Earth.
I create original art in with intention. In my current work I use complex means to explore relationships between forms: acrylic colors and ink combined with textures and dimensional attributes from repurposed materials such as torn tissue paper, wire, corrugated cardboard packaging, and broken glass to create a vision of how my mind interprets the world around us and tie art to environmental issues. I also sell prints and create original art on useful and lasting household items like tote bags, hand-painted chef aprons, and ornaments.
Vision
I don't want to mirror the world. I want to expand our view of what the world could be.
My emotions, imaginings, and thoughts flow from the tools in my hands into the paint. I combine repurposed ingredients with paint to connect small bits of reality with something completely not- think playbox sand and old, broken holiday ornaments meet ancient landscapes, contrived realities, or the view from my window.
My work can be bright and amusing and it can be shockingly dark. It's that step outside of reality that allows you to leave behind the more mundane work of life to experience something completely set apart.
I encourage you to be shocked, surprised and simply befuddled as I challenge how we perceive day-to-day reality all around us.
It's never what you think, and then surprisingly it is.
