Dana is an artist with a focus on nature who incorporates the wabi-sabi aesthetic in her compositions. Wabi-sabi is a traditional Japanese aesthetic which signifies acceptance of transience and imperfection. In her mixed-media paintings, Dana integrates wabi-sabi to capture the small and simple beauty of nature. A conscious effort to honor the mundane and incidental is part of her artistic philosophy. She embraces the shapes, textures and colors of materials that come from our forests, oceans and quarries and combines them with pigments and mediums to highlight their innate and delicate beauty. Dana seeks to create awareness, insight, and explores the fragile connections between nature and human society. She invites the viewer to be drawn into the work and contemplate our fragile connection with nature as well as the moral weight of our influence on it.
Painting for Dana is an intuitive, dynamic and evolving process. Her work is a continuous investigation of abstraction and exploration of color and texture. For her, the ultimate creative expression involves the integration of spirituality, zen sensibility, and earth's natural materials.
Dana received her degree in Comparative Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. After a career in the non-profit community as an executive director and program director, she decided to return to her passion. In mid 2012, she fulfilled this long delayed commitment and devoted herself to artistic endeavors, and in 2015 started studying under Stella Zhang. Dana’s work has appeared in over fifty museum exhibitions and numerous solo and invitational exhibitions in galleries and art centers throughout the US.
Wabi-Sabi
Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese aesthetic focused on the acceptance of impermanence and imperfections. It finds the understated beauty that exists in the humble, weathered, rustic and imperfect. Wabi sabi is modest, quiet, and reveres authenticity. It is the fleeting beauty found in autumn leaves and cherry blossoms. It celebrates the cracks, fading and other marks that time, weather and use leave behind. Wabi refers to living simply and in tune with nature and sabi signifies the beauty in natural progression. Wabi-sabi is the inspiration to pause and reflect on nature, of being aware of simple things and taking the time to cherish the moment, however fragile and fleeting. Through wabi-sabi we can be more mindful and more present, to enjoy the simple beauty that surrounds us.
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