Diane Levesque

medium: painting
wisconsin arts board artist fellowship award winner, 2000
wisconsin academy gallery artist

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Oedipus and Jocasta 2003 Painting	An Awkward Comparison 2002 Painting	Debris of Life and Mind 2002 Painting
Stuart Davis: Cool Spectator 2000 Painting	Crazy Dumbsaint of the Mind 1999 Painting	The Country of the Marvelous 2003 Painting
James Joyce: He Domesticated His Metaphysics 2004 Painting	Dr.Temple's Cabinet of Curiosities 2007 Painting	Insecurity 2006 Painting
Unworthy 2005 Mixed media

Contact information
Artist resides in: Kenosha, WI
Email Address: dianelevesque@msn.com
Web site: www.dianelevesque.net

Artist statement
My work represents an ongoing investigation into the metaphoric possibilities of objects and the psychological projections they attract. As remnants of material culture, these objects carry with them the residue of memory, psychological associations, the relativity of time and space and the complexity of identity.

Through a layering of temporal and spatial, as well as textual and decorative, elements I explore the concept of reality as a product of perception, cultural adaptation and engendered responses while also suggesting the possibility of a metaphysical relationship to phenomena that would entail exposure to numinous experiences.

Often initiated by a line of poetry or prose, these dream-like accumulations of objects congeal around a central figure who is transformed through psychological projection into a combined image of the seer and the seen. The defiance of the laws of gravity, unruly shifts in scale, and claustrophobic settings are used to emphasize the chaotic nature of thought and the often irrational aspect of human motivations. This combination of concrete, personified objects with linear elements creates a carapace for the individuals embedded within them. In this way thoughts become petrified things bound to the labyrinth of memory.

Biography
EDUCATION
M.F.A., University of Chicago, 1983

B.A., State University of New York at Plattsburgh, 1980

AWARDS
2000 Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship Award

1999 GRADIVA Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, New York

1990 CAAPS grant, City of Chicago

1987 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship Grant

ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2000 Peltz Gallery, Milwaukee, Wis.

1998 Wisconsin Academy Gallery, Madison, Wis.

1994 Chicago Cultural Center

1992 Armstrong Gallery, Cornell College, Mt.Vernon, Iowa

1989 Artemisia Gallery, Chicago

1985 Hokin/Kaufman Gallery, Chicago

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2003 "ART MILWAUKEE", Peltz Gallery, Wis.

2002 "Extraordinary Things," Indiana State University

2001 "Remarkable Women Artists," Peltz Gallery, Wis.

2000 "The Buddha Show," Oskar Freidl Gallery, Chicago

1998 "Portraits; In the Eye of the Beholder" Peltz Gallery, Wis.

1996 "Wisconsin Triennial," Madison Art Center, Madison, Wis.

1992 "Figurative/Narrative," Struve Gallery, Chicago

1990 "The Chicago Show," Chicago Cultural Center

1986 "Self-portraits; Then or Now," A.R.C. Gallery, Chicago

1985 "81st Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity," The Art Institute of Chicago