Meet: Diana McNish

Our front window at Petley Jones Gallery is currently alive with vibrant, figurative sculptures by Diana McNish. Below is Prunella - she is larger-than-life, not only in her appearance but in her size. Her torso folds over at the hips, but if she were able to raise herself upright, she would tower over your average professional basketball player.

Her curved upper-half is, in fact, made of one solid piece of driftwood. According to Diana, Prunella is a throwback from the nursery rhyme “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater.” Indeed, Prunella appears to be stepping straight out of a storybook - she is beautiful and glamorous in a truly unique and, frankly, unsettling way. Her dress, hair, shoes, and make up are carefully decorated, and the proportions of her body are manipulated in an other-worldly fashion. Her appearance is something that could have only been imagined up in a dream (or a nightmare).

Diana’s sculptures are built of driftwood and a mixture of resin, fiberglass, found materials and/or acrylic paints. As a child, she spent her summers on Savary Island in British Columbia, where she continues to visit to gather the driftwood that support her imaginative sculptures:

“I’m a kid from a sandbar, from the Pacific Northwest where I grew up watching my father pick up a piece of driftwood asking all of us children ‘what do you see?’ Mornings I rose to the sounds of seashells opening at low tide, gurgling their way back to sea. This was and is my life, my inspiration, my raison d’etre. My work today is because of all things beautiful from the lip of low tide, the flotsam and jetsam of love, passion, and life.”

Come visit us at Petley Jones Gallery to experience her sculptures for yourself!

For more information:

Diana McNish, Petley Jones Gallery artist page.

by Stephanie Matchung