Diana Copperwhite

 In her paintings, Diana Copperwhite explores the relationship between colors, gestures, figuration, and representation, harmonizing different visual strategies on the canvas. Copperwhite, who is based in Dublin, amalgamates images from the internet, photographs, and real life, unifying these sources in paintings that critically assess the medium’s ability to represent images, sensations, and ideas. “Painting is so physical but has the potential to do something very different to other media. . . . I think that aspects of technology are almost hypnotic and trance-like and this creates a space in my paintings that gives rise to what you might consider the psychedelic,” Copperwhite has said.

Diana Copperwhite’s work stems from an idiosyncratic practice that embraces the temporal nature of painting. This encompasses working with large-scale wall installations, large canvases and ongoing interest with the human portrait. Born 1969 in Limerick, she studied at the Limerick School of Art and Design, receiving a BA in painting at the National college of Art and Design, Dublin and went on to do an MFA at the Winchester School of Art and Design, Barcelona. Copperwhite is engaged with a sustained conceptual exploration of memory and abstraction. Using identifiable subjects, sometimes drawing on media images, she plays with light and color to create slightly unreal dreamlike and transitory compositions. The mood of her work is generally lyrical, creating an air of ambiguity of memories transformed in the unceasing passage of time. In a most unique capacity, she works over recognizable images, reworking their surface and adding rich layers, so that objects are transported in an entirely new direction into a fluid visual quality of being reimagined in singular vibrant ways.

Copperwhite's work is in many important public collections, including Irish Museum of Modern Art, Arts Council of Ireland, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Office of Public Works, Contemporary Irish Art Society, Mariehamn Stadbiblioteque, Aland Finland, International Red Cross Netherlands, as well as private collections across Europe and the US, and in Australia. She has exhibited widely, including in London, Dublin, Tokyo, Sydney, Amsterdam, Barcelona, New York, France, Amsterdam. Her work is held in many important public collections including the Office of Public Works, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Arts Council of Ireland, Limerick City Gallery of Art, as well as private collections in Ireland, across Europe and in the United States. Copperwhite was awarded the AIB Art Prize in 2007, which resulted in a major monograph and touring exhibition of her work. Her publication Fake New World was published to coincide with a wall drawing and exhibition at the RHA Gallery Dublin, and features a biography written by Gail Levin. She was a resident artist at the Josef Albers Foundation Connecticut (2012). She was a finalist in the Guasch Coranty Fundacio Painting Prize, Centre Cultural Metropolita Tecia Sala, Barcelona (2008) and was winner of the AIB Art Prize (2007).