Dianne Bugash was born into a family of artists. Her mother, a graduate of The Corcoran School of Art, was chosen to represent that school at the opening of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C and always kept materials on hand for her girls to “play with”.   Her father, a builder and sculptor, taught her to use tools.

 

“I grew up with a passion for living a creative life”, she says. It’s driven her to maintain a vibrant studio and pass on the joy of creativity by teaching painting and drawing, not only to art school students, but also to adults who wish to be creative. An unexpected outcome of her years teaching has been the invigorating and stimulating discussions that carry over and support the ideas embedded in her own work.

 

Dianne’s interest in demystifying the art world for the public has guided her to teach and lecture as opportunities arose. She has served on the faculty of the Corcoran College of Art and Design and the Maryland College of Art and Design. She’s also designed and presented workshops: "Doodling Towards Art" for non-artists at the Washington Project for the Arts.  As her desire to open the doors of creativity to the public strengthened, she was accepted to the Golden Acrylic Working Artist Program where she gave lectures and workshops on how to use acrylic paints and mediums, color theory, and the origins of pigments and their inherent qualities.  Later, she was chosen to docent for The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden where she introduced the public to art from both creativity and historical points of view.   In addition, she created a video for Howard County, MD public TV, about painting techniques for beginner painters.  

 

 

All of the activities outside of the Studio have given Dianne the freedom to express her thoughts without constraints of fashion or trends and to develop her painting techniques.

Dianne’s artistic focus has been on cut-out, shaped paintings using acrylics on wood backed canvases.

The core of her paintings stem from her love of nature, walks along wild shores, and in forests.  Her need is to combine imagery of what she has observed to be ”a very orderly natural ecosystem fighting to survive against the chaotic human static”.  This STATIC is her umbrella name for all the “hands grabbing and yanking the natural order of life from the earth for the sake of our own human “progress”.   Often spontaneously extracted from her images of nature and mankind in action, the designs and colors become a tightly woven composition directly from eye to hand. "There is something unspeakable about the outcome", she says, “that allows me to catch a second in someone's life or capture an interaction between two beings”. Either way, she seems to be zooming in or zooming out of her inner and outer world.

The cut-outs evolved out of a need to cut away extraneous information and find something poetic and magical in the imagery left behind. . She’s always been attracted to shapes and as she "draws" with her jigsaw, the shape of the piece becomes apparent.

  

 Dianne is a featured artist in the book,  "Rethinking Acrylics", Northlight Publications, 2008, where she demonstrated and explained some of her techniques. She has held residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center and The Torpedo Factory Art Center in Arlington, VA.  She has exhibited widely in art centers and university galleries such as the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, and the Maryland Art Place Critics' Residency Program, juried by Franklin Sirmans.  She has had solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions throughout the United States. Her work is held in public, private and corporate collections.