If I can’t dance–the paintings of dianne k webb

January 23, 2014 mariekazalia Leave a comment

If I can’t dance, dianne k webb

In dianne k webb’s painting, If I can’t dance, female heads with yellow hair and calligraphic arms dance across a city skyline. “I believe that art is a dance, a communication between artist and viewer…” says the artist. “As I work, I want to find myself exploring new perspectives—I want to feel uneasy, jarred, contemplative, or reflective as images, colors, textures clash or meld. I am fascinated by the moment of “ah ha!” of “really?” My work seeks to capture those moments and translate them conceptually, abstractly on the canvas, into words or through theater.

The titles dianne k webb’s has chosen for her paintings are, not surprisingly, filled with the language of dance and theater. In addition to being a painter, dianne is also the director of the Next Iteration Theater in Houston, Texas. Interestingly, the logo image dianne chose for her Next Iteration Theater website, is her own photograph of headless sculptural forms inside an ancient church in Paris.

HEADLESS, dianne k webb

Next Iteration Theater is in its infancy, according to dianne. “I am just bringing together a few people who want to be part of this project and we are just setting up the “legal” pieces….figuring out our structure, which will be ensemble in how we operate with actors, and in general. I am teaching acting classes here in Houston and building up some interest that way. I believe that actors need affordable classes so they can work on skills when they are not performing and hone their craft, after all as an artist I spend hours every day in the studio.”

Dianne also directs for several small theaters in Houston and loves working with new playwrights. She is interested in “casting across races and ethnicities and changing how we “see” traditional pieces…something I do not find in many theaters here, in spite of the vast diversity in Houston.”

El Malecon, dianne k webb

The tiny human figures in dianne k webb’s painting titled El Malecon appear to be traversing the globe, while the forms in her painting titled But You Thrive seem to be pure abstract movement.

But You Thrive, dianne k webb

Also recurring in webb’s paintings, the viewer will find handwritten text as visual element. Refer back to the Next Iteration Theater logo image and note that the headless sculptural forms are holding books in their arms. And so we see the recurring visual elements of the artist’s themes of text, the writing of the playwright, human figures, movement, and abstract forms in motion as they seem to move into place to suggest form, connect, and disperse to dance again on a stage. Or, as the artist herself wrote, her paintings are– “a statement laid bare until picked up and incorporated into a new narrative.”