Diane Feught Commentary

The Drawers - Diane Feught Commentary written by Julie Oakes

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Diane Feught

A Queen is a figure head, one who rules. She can be a consort to a King or she can reign alone. She is an example to her subjects and upholds the laws or regulations prescribed by the members of her kingdom. She is the shining light that illuminates darkness, dispels chaos and inspires right living. Queens are fairytale, mythological, fantastic figures and yet there are also 'real' Queens. A Queen is the highest ranking female within a kingdom. She is a woman of great power and effectiveness. She is also a solitary being for there can only be one Queen although there can be many realms.

That Diane Feught should create a series of paintings on paper addressing the theme of women by creating images of Queens and accomplish such a regal display of beauty and strength, is a royal curtsey before the gender. She recognises the potential of her feminine perspective and uses that potential personally to summon up her slate of women. Women have a large range, of colors, textures, dispositions, levels, overlaps and tendencies. They talk with the moon and receive messages from the other side while still taking care of the necessities. They possess a dignified patience that oversees differences and difficulties and yet are susceptible to bouts of self immersion. Against a hand painted, deep brocade background, Diane Feught's luminous beings become votive icons, offered in devotion to womanhood and continuing with a life of their own to inspire and serve as an example of the force of females.

Women have been said to love beautiful things as well as embodying beauty themselves. Feught has the intuition to call to mind and hence to bring to her creativity, a range of women. She has painted traditional goddesses such as Q'an Yin (the Chinese female principal), Mara (the evil one who tried to tempt the Buddha and whom Feught depicts in the same frame as a snarling bear with a fire raging above her head) or Mamakala (the avenging Hindu deity). She also presents women who appear to belong to today such as the ones depicted in the realms denoted 'shelter', 'jewel' or 'ghost'. The pearl in 'jewel' is suggestive of a woman's sex, her precious treasure, hidden in the deep dark cave of her physicality and rendered to nestle in amorphous golden folds like the crown jewel of a private realm. Even the comic character Wonder Woman is extended to 'wonderful' by Feught's titling and has been given noble status through the elegant depiction.

Diane Feught, like a Queen, has granted titles to each of her women, allotting them kingdoms and an aristocratic dignity. With a style of depiction that leaves the old masters behind, she makes paintings on paper of women who become accentuated through her skill and elevated taste. She has made art work fit for a palace, as rich as any of the phenomenal works of the Renaissance that were made for the grand castles, ecclesiastic collections and public interiors of yore. There is, in fact, a large degree of 'yore' - and suggested lore - in Feught's recent series of Queens. These regal women awaken yearnings. This is the effect of being in the presence of Queens.


Q'an Yin, 2007-gouache, acrylic, rust & metal foil on paper-20x17"	Mara, 2007-gouache, acrylic, rust on paper-20 x 17 inches

Mamakala, 2007-gouache, acrylic, rust on paper-20 x 17 inches	Yama, 2007-gouache, acrylic, rust on paper-20 x 17 inches