About
Dianne Schepers
About ten years ago felt became my prime focus as my unrivaled embracing medium of colour, texture, softness, filled with endless energy, making it a surprising vibrant medium.
Textiles, pure wool and silk, soft textures, colour and shine effects, working on large pieces and how that altogether affects my perception of an object has long been a fascination. I’ve experimented with many natural materials, textures, colours and sizes, each creating its own atmosphere and imagination, surprising me time after time again and enabling my vision being transformed into a form of substance. I am inspired by the treasures of Mother Nature as well as by the work and smiles of people from many cultures, creators of colours, objects, stories, and dreams.
Entering a felt work or any other work of art involves a conditional promise to do so with open eyes, to be aware of possibilities. Perception and interaction lead to an act of mutual discovery, a universal bond of our existence. There is no right answer hidden within each piece, only a shared journey.
About Felt
People and rooms want to find each other to feel at home with each other. Walls radiating warmth resonate with people. That inspires me to create large wall felts that may be touched, to unite contemporary art with the feel of a millennia-old, pure sensation: felt, one of the oldest textiles known to mankind. Felt is made from wool. Mostly sheep`s wool, but also for example goat, camel, and alpaca. Raw, carded, dyed or undyed unspun wool fibres are wetted, rubbed and rolled until they shrink and form a solid textile medium, often with a strong 3-dimensional tactile experience.
Wool is a supersmart natural material and has many extraordinary qualities, such asnon-flammability, the ability to regulate acoustics, and, wool insulates, is dirt-repellent and odour-absorbing.
By laying thick layers of wools and silks, rubbing them with water and soap, fulling and often cutting them for hour after hour, I am creating felt tapestries with intriguing textures in deep colours, which are telling tales. Felt`s vibrancy and rawness in felt tapestries brings a visual, tactile and emotional experience. It injects energy and life into a space, and, the presence of felt art tapestries in a room or building has proven to increase the productivity and sense of well-being of people living or working there.
Pure Felt
A part of the sales and lease proceeds of my art works will be donated to the Swiss charity association “Pure Felt – the ART of Empowerment”.
Pure Felt is a nonprofit organisation that empowers, trains and employs unemployed youth and women in high-unemployment and low-privileged areas by co-creating extraordinary interior felt art installations commissioned to Pure Felt by organisations and multinationals from all over the world that support Pure Felt`s mission.
