Diana Appleton
Riverside Girls High School
INCONSPICUOUS MUNDANITY
Collection of Work
Acrylic on canvas, pencil on paper
In my body of work my intention was to spark the audience’s thoughts about the way our developing, fast-paced society affects our appreciation for smaller, unnoticed experiences. These occasions are often overlooked. I have used sketches and a dry brush painting style to represent the significance of these intimate, quiet and mundane moments of life and human relationships. My work uses nostalgia in homage to these easily forgotten points in time. Wherever you go, you will find humanity.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: Tracey Moffatt, Edward Hopper.
Marker's Commentary
This refined body of work presents an exploration of the quiet, often overlooked rhythms of everyday life through a series of intricate pencil drawings and evocative painted panels. The graphite renderings, delicately tonal and meticulously detailed, invite intimate contemplation. Each drawing captures a pair of figures engaged in seemingly mundane acts, eating, sitting, conversing, but rendered with such sensitivity that their gestures resonate with emotional weight. These moments, though ordinary, unveil subtle narratives of connection, tension, and the quiet negotiations that underpin human relationships.
In contrast, the trio of painted panels shifts the viewer into a more ambiguous psychological space. Depicting domestic interiors bathed in soft pastel hues, the works are punctuated by the spectral presence of human shadows cast against walls, ghostly silhouettes caught in relational stances. These figures echo the gestures of companionship but are marked by postures that suggest restraint or guardedness. The gentle colour palette, juxtaposed with these shadowy forms, cultivates a sense of unease.
Together, the drawings and paintings gesture toward the duality inherent in human connection: the visible, performative surface of relational life and the veiled, often contradictory emotions that exist beneath. The work challenges the audience to look beyond the superficial gestures of interaction, probing the emotional terrains where vulnerability, distance, desire and defence quietly coexist. The title of the collection of works subtly echoes this tension, acting as both a guide and a mirror, prompting the viewer to consider what lies beneath the surface of familiar gestures and seemingly simple moments.