 For her latest work, visit Dianne's Painting Blog |
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About the artist...
I am a
product of rural Georgia. I was born and grew up in
tiny
Carnesville, about 30 miles north of Athens. Attitudes were
narrow, neighbors were nosy, and few had heard of Chopin, Leonardo or
Homer, though just about everybody had heard of Shakespeare, and nary a
soul was unfamiliar with the Holy Bible.
Religion ruled the lives of most folks. Choices were Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist or Church of God. Catholicism was suspect and preached against, and Buddism was a total abomination. In that place, in those days, kids finishing high school who wanted something more than day to day backyard fence chatter, looked to the big city, to the military or to higher education. In that environment and growing up in the 50's, the boys could have a go at about anything, but not many career options were open to a girl. Most got married soon after high school; a few went to business schools or a trade school, but precious few went on to college. And for those, options were pretty much limited to nursing and teaching. It was okay for a girl to become a doctor, though strange and a bit unheard of, but it was not okay for a girl to become an artist. Keep in mind, I'm talking about the world of Carnesville, Georgia, very much an isle unto itself, very much unconnected with the larger world. I don't remember a time when I didn't love drawing and painting. In my room at home, in my college dorm room or whereever I lived, a studio area was a part of my necessary environment, but art was a "hobby," certainly not a career option. Not until my senior year in college did I realize that for me, becoming an artist might be a possibility. That light went on when my French teacher, Madame Ellen Naniche, saw something special in my work and offered for me to live free of charge with her parents in Paris in order to study art there. But I was still underage, and my parents would hear nothing of it, so it didn't happen. Instead, I became a high school English teacher, though the principal had known that I was an artist and asked me to begin art classes for the kids there who were gifted in art. And so I did. But my yearning to study art, to make it the focal point in my life, became an obsession, so much so that early on I made plans to return to college and study painting and drawing. During my third year of teaching high school, I was able to get a scholarship to enter the University of Georgia's Visual Arts Program. Of course I met strong disapproval from my parents. They thought I was throwing away my life, that it was foolish to give up a career that was respectable, that I would become a "worthless beatnik." But my twenty-first birthday had long passed, so they no longer could make decisions for me. I gave up my teaching job and went back to school. This was in the mid-'60s, a time still very difficult for a woman to make a career as an artist, so after finishing my BFA requirements, I became a high school art teacher. I spent ten years teaching high school; then after finishing the graduate program in painting at Goddard College, I spent another ten teaching college, heading the Visual Arts Department at Piedmont College. During those years, six times I was chosen to teach art in Georgia's Governor's Honors Program, chairing the department for four of those years. It was here that I discovered what true freedom to teach really meant. Becoming a teacher was probably a blessing because it showed me that I also had a gift for teaching; but the limitations imposed by public education "standards" truncated what I thought was possible. I often dreamed of starting my own art school, and so it was that in 1984, my life-partner Dr. Howard Hanson and I founded an alternative art school for adults, which thrived for sixteen years as a private non-profit entity. Thinking ahead about retirement and wanting the school to live on, in 2000 we merged with the Sautee Nacoochee Center. I continued as Art Studio Director there until I retired from teaching at the end of March, 2007. Although I snatched time to paint all along the way, hardly a day passed during those forty-three years that I didn't yearn for the time when I could draw and paint on my own terms with no other obligation. Today I am doing just that, painting every day, finally realizing my dream of self-actualization. My belief in the importance of each artist's evolving through his or her individual uniqueness taught me to distrust juried shows because I saw them as leading artists into making winning in them more of a priority than being true to themselves. And it appeared evident to me that prizes were awarded toward the juror's preference and prejudice, that not many shows were judged by objective standards This was glaringly proved in the early 70's when, along with several hundred other Georgia artists, I experienced the wrath of Holly Solomon, champion of such artists as Robert Kushner and Robert Mapplethorpe. Solomon was juror for an annual statewide competition of Georgia artists. After reviewing more than a thousand slides of art work, she notified the show sponsors that she found nothing at all among these 1000+ Georgia artists' work which merited selection, and so she selected none, not one. My work was pictured among those slides. Perhaps that is my proudest resumè datum. After this experience I decided to stop entering competitions altogether. It was not so much being rejected by a New York mainstreamer as knowing at a gut level that being rejected or being accepted by a juror is totally meaningless, indicating nothing more than that particular juror's attitude. So, unless I reach back before 1970, I have no awards to list.
One
word about the media in which I work. I enjoy
working with watercolor, oils, pastels, pen & Ink and graphite
pencil. During my first year of retirement, I worked entirely in
watercolor, but currently I'm working in oils.
Who knows what will come next. Stay tuned.
Dianne Mize December, 2007 Updated October, 2008 |
 Dianne Mize
Education: AA, BA, BFA, MFA Teaching Experience: ...Art School 23 years ...College Visual Arts 10 years ...Georgia's Governor's Honors Program 6 summers ...High School Art and English 10 years Multiple solo shows In numerous private and public collections. |
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