Featured Artwork Title: “Dripping”
Medium: Gold mixed media on canvas – Acrylic pour with an outlined portrait of a woman in profile
Year: 2022
Introducing our Color Palette of the Month artist, DiAn Dviation!
Meet our July Color Palette Artist, DiAn Dviation. DiAn believes everything starts with a story and that as powerful dynamic beings in our otherwise random universe we are capable of meaningful creations and manifestations.
DiAn is an artist, storyteller, and conjurer. He shares and teaches from his lived experience as a Black, queer, disabled person on building sustainable relationships and care practices that center pleasure for you and the people in your heart space.
DiAn has been creating art and ceremonies for over 15 years and has been featured in galleries across the US. He has worked in film, voice, 2-D and 3-D visual arts, and dance.
While much of his art is inspired by lived experience, he also borrows from the stories of friends or community folklore.
DiAn finds it important to share the stories of marginalized people, not just the trauma many of us have survived, but also the whimsy, lightheartedness, and magic that are just as real.
Very often, I have ideas about which colors I would like in the earliest stages of planning a piece. What moment am I trying to share? Is it brightly lit with intense variation from dark to light? Maybe it is more monochromatic, like the inside of an old office building full of wood paneling and tungsten lights. What is the subject of my art feeling? How do I want the viewer to feel?
Color is one of the first solutions to all these types of questions for me. I find inspiration in my surroundings, both natural and man-made, and in the stories and feelings I observe in those spaces. Sometimes the colors I choose line up with traditional Western color wheel pairings, but I am never limited by those “rules.” There is so much power in pushing past tradition to do something intimate, bold, and true to yourself.
The pieces I am sharing here are very different but share a similar color palette inspired by bonfires at sunset. Deep reds, rich browns, warm blacks, misty peach, and blue-purple tones recreate the comfort and sense of caution one can feel from gathering around a giant blaze.
-DiAn Aviation on how they choose their color palettes.
