Diane Victor

Diane Victor worked on these prints in March 2009. One of her first comments on arriving at the studio was that "I know these hills, I used to walk here as a child" she said pointing to the granite outcrops on the edge of the valley. Turns out that an uncle of hers farms azaleas up the road from the studio.

Diane Victor is somewhat like a spring, tightly coiled, tiny and capable of great power. Physically she travels light perhaps as a counterpoint to the weight of the issues that she deals with in her work. She prefers imagery to words and the strength of her visual eloquence hits one in the gut and takes one's breath away.

Perhaps the word that best describes both Diane Victor and her work is paradox and dichotomy. One senses that she would be happy never to see or hear humans again and yet she is a dedicated and brilliant teacher. Her work examines the underbelly of society and our lives with an extraordinary intensity and yet the marks that she makes are exquisitely beautiful.

As one of South Africa leading artists there is much information on the web about her, perhaps best covered by Artthrob, see:
Diane Victor biography
Diane Victor exhibition review

With these prints we had the meeting of two perfectionists in the studio, Mark Attwood the master printer and Diane Victor the maestro. She presented Attwood with a daunting challenge; turning a smoke portrait into a print. Perhaps best described by the Michael Stevenson Gallery as "smoke deposits on paper" turning these fugitive images into solid prints are just the technical thing to get an obsessive printer going. She worked on the image by holding the grained film (attached to a board) above her head, with a burning candle in the other. She then "drew" with the smoke to create beautiful but disturbing portraits of men. Like the smoke their presence is elusive and yet enduring. Getting the plates to print and getting the roller pressure just right was complicated by the artist being a printer in her own right. Eventually a mere mortal had to intervene to tell them that the prints were brilliant and that existential despair could not scupper this project!

In the prints "Our lady of the Stains" and "Our Lady of the Bromeliads" Victor combined delicate pencil drawing (in the studio we have decided that women win the drawing prize, hands down!! See Judith Mason and Hanneke Bernade for further proof) with tusche washes that maximizes the potential of lithography. These images continue Diane Victor's interest in using religious icons and figures as vehicles for her social commentary. Diane Victor deals almost transgresively with the boundaries between ecstasy and terror.

A wall eyed Madonna figure is pierced by Bromeliads (flowering in the garden at the time), which adorn and disfigure her at the same time. The soft colours of the plants and the intricacy of their flowers are contrasted by their brittle spiky feel. Like the Madonna they are also tough and do well in dry shady conditions.

In "Our Lady of the Stains" the woman is caught in the throws of either religious or sexual ecstasy or perhaps the pain of being shot. Brownish purple and black stains "explode" on the image, their translucency revealing details of the fine drawing beneath them.

Diane Victor has won numerous awards (since the time of being a student, some twenty years ago) and has exhibited widely within South Africa and overseas. Her work is in leading South African corporate, state and private collections (where it has been known to stir up staff sensitivities) as well as in international collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York (her Disasters of Peace prints being purchased to compliment the museums collection of Goya's "Disaster's of War"). She should be declared a national treasure.

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Lithographs 2009