Diane Pfister

Diane Pfister is an American artist and art lecturer whose work was first recognized in London, England, and other territories of the United Kingdom. Her early work includes collage, impressionism and abstract expressionism but is now primarily abstract oils, incorporating techniques drawn from microphotography, map coordinates and satellite surveillance to merge abstraction with 21st century realism.

Biography

Born December 6, 1954, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Diane Gayle Pfister graduated from Norwood High School in Norwood, Ohio in 1973,^[1] later studying Fine Arts at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, before proceeding on to post-graduate photographic work at The Parsons School of Design in New York. After moving to London, she studied printmaking during a fellowship at the Slade School of Art and Fine Art post-graduate work at St Martin’s School of Art. She returned with her family to the United States in 2006. Today she resides in Cincinnati, where she maintains a studio at the Pendleton Art Center.

Pfister (who initially painted under her married name of Diane Epstein) worked commercially in various media—including collage, photography and sculpture—for book jacket and poster illustration before committing herself to painting in 1995.

Series

Working principally in oils, her series include "Toys" (in which she explored the "residual power" of the "sacred geometry" of playthings important to her in childhood); "Scars" (a series of nude body studies etched with obscure, lost French dialect calligraphy); "Abstract Locations" (an examination of "how technology has altered traditional notions of viewing our environment"... "a world unknown to us a century ago"); and "End Papers" ("dedicated to the transient beauty of the printed book... fast becoming the dinosaur of our generation").^[2] The latter were the subject of a successful 2006 exhibition at the Duncan Campbell Gallery in London. Pfister's paintings have also been acquired by private and corporate collections in the United States, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Australia.

Since relocating with her family to her native country in 2006, Pfister has mounted the exhibition "Painting is Soundless Poetry" at the Good News Gallery in Woodbury, Connecticut. Here she unveiled two more series, "Source Energy" and a series of "Kimono" triptychs, which interested Pfister for the "independent picture plane a kimono creates on the human body." In notes provided to the exhibit, she continued "The East found it more important to ignore the surface of the body, while the West obsessed with the figure. It is the difference between the diaphanous, transcendental and intellectual, versus the worldly and secular. It is my hope that viewing these works may trigger in others the sense of floating in that space."

Critical Recognition

Writing about Pfister's work, David Buckman (author of the standard reference Artists in Britain Since 1945) noted that some artists pursue "a narrow course, hardly deviating from it over a lifetime's work. Pfister has chosen the far tougher route: constantly rethiniking how she can view the world around her. Her career experience and wide training in America and Britain have encouraged an unusual open-mindedness. Paintings as richly diverse as the Abstract Locations, plus all the rest of Pfister's exhibition, need no more explanatory words to justify their merits as compelling images."^[3]

Screenwriting

In 2009, Pfister coauthored The Weight of Salt and Soul with Tim Lucas, an original screenplay based on the life of Ishi, a Native American who was the last of his tribe and acclimated to the white man's world during the early twentieth century.^[4]

Lecturing History

Bath College of Art and Design (1990–1995); Co-Head of Third Year Degree Programme Chelsea College of Art, London (1993–1994); Westminster College, London (1992–1996); TASIS international school, Windsor UK & Lugano, Switzerland (1985–1990).

Education

Post Graduate Diploma in Art, St Martins College of Art and Design; 1995 Printmaking Fellowship Faculty Grant Award, Slade College of Art (1980–1981); Parsons School of Design, New York; Graduate Work 1979-1980 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Miami University, Ohio, USA; 1977 Charlotte Schmidlapp Honor Scholarship, Full Undergraduate Tuition, Miami University, Ohio (1973–1977).

Exhibitions

Thornbury Castle, Thornbury, Glos (1996); Collyer Bristow Gallery, London (1997); Chelsea & Westiminster Hospital, London (2003); Ashursts Gallery, London (2004); Westbourne Studios, London (2005); Duncan Campbell Gallery, London (2006); The Felix, Cambridge (2007); Good News Gallery, Woodbury, Connecticut (2008).

Notes

1. ^ Norwood High School "Silhouette" Yearbook 1973
2. ^ All Pfister quotes taken from her series annotations at her website, www.pfister.co.uk
3. ^ Buckman, David. Duncan Campbell Gallery catalogue 2006
4. ^ Lucas, Tim. "Waffling About Watchdog, Weight and Woodstock," Video WatchBlog (www.videowatchdog.blogspot.com), 19 June 2009

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Name	Pfister, Diane
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Date of birth	1954
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