About: Water Women invites viewers into a fluid world where women, in all stages of life, exist unapologetically in their natural form. Set against the enduring backdrop of water, the paintings often feature women in simple black bathing suits, nearly exposed yet adorned with the purpose and presence of private experience. Water serves as both symbol and setting, challenging the narrow and often sexualized lens of perfection while seeking to normalize and celebrate the female form in all its diversity. As the figures stride, stretch, laugh, and reflect, the series honors the evolving story of womanhood and reveals the undeniable truth of what it means to live embodied in the female form in real life.
Free Refreshments will be available from 5- 8pm. Artist Talk and Q&A at 6:30pm.
Artist Bio: As a painter, Diane Crossan views the canvas as a sacred space, a channel through which she engages both subject and viewer. Her paintings are perceivable narratives, inviting viewers to see aspects of themselves while contemplating the visual story before them.
Her work engages the viewer emotionally, intellectually, and aesthetically. The Water Women series seeks to embody the inherent, lived-in beauty of a woman’s outward form through candid depictions of the female figure. Fascinated, and often outraged, by the phases and struggles that shape a woman’s life, Crossan strives to portray her subjects with honesty, revealing raw emotion and physical distinction. The figures are strong, real, vulnerable, and flawed. These are not portraits in the traditional sense, but repositories for what is universal.
Stylistically, her work carries a sense of whimsy and lyricism, but also curiosity and occasional discomfort. She paints with acrylic on canvas, building each piece in layers. Words and sentences are often written into the ground of the painting, with traces of earlier layers visible in the final image. For Crossan, painting is an intensely personal and sometimes painful process. In the end, her aim is visual honesty, a conduit to the authenticity that resides in each of us.
Diane Crossan has over 25 years of experience providing rich and engaging visual art encounters to individuals and groups across the lifespan as a passionate and innovative teacher of visual arts. Currently a practicing artist and arts educator, she has dedicated her career to teaching art—as a Master Teacher of Art at the University of Delaware Laboratory Preschool and The College School, as well as serving as adjunct faculty and an artist-in-residence, all based at the University of Delaware in Newark.
Previously, she was an art instructor and kindergarten teacher at Tall Oaks Classical School, and Gallery Director at Hardcastle’s Art Gallery in Wilmington, Delaware. Through these experiences, Crossan developed curriculum for students enrolled in two university laboratory schools, collaborated with teachers to deepen their understanding of the role of the arts in education, and initiated ongoing teacher research projects.
Her publications include Early Experiences and Creativity: An Ecological Perspective and Cambridge Companion to Creativity and Reason in Cognitive Development, co-authored with C. Paris. She holds a BFA from the University of Delaware (1985).
In addition to her work in arts education, Crossan mounted a solo exhibition, The New Normal, at the Cecil County Arts Council in Elkton, Maryland, and participated in Passages: 8 Women Painters at the Stedman Gallery, Rutgers University–Camden Campus. Her work is held in private collections. She lives in North East, Maryland, with her two giant dogs.
