My work explores the relationship between the natural and the constructed, and the space between what is real and what is represented. Using textiles gathered from domestic spaces, thrift stores, and local sources, I create fabric landscapes based on photographs of specific natural environments. I work with the materials as I find them, altering them as little as possible and allowing their colors, patterns, and histories to shape the image.

The landscapes are assembled from separate elements, creating areas of negative space that are an important part of the work. These gaps suggest organic structures found in nature and the impossibility of fully capturing or possessing a place. The resulting pieces are images, objects, and incomplete records.

Once finished, the textile landscapes are installed outdoors and photographed, often in the locations that inspired them. They are sometimes reinstalled in different environments, bringing together elements from multiple places and challenging fixed ideas of nature and place. Textile panels from earlier projects are often combined with new ones, allowing the work to grow over time into an evolving forest, suggestive of the diversity and layering found in natural ecosystems.

At times, textile panels are placed within interior spaces and function as stand-alone representations of nature, in which case the installation is the final stage of the work. When installed outdoors, a photograph of the installation within its surrounding environment is the final stage of the work.

Drawing on textile traditions, folk art, and historical representations of nature, my practice explores how memory and history shape the ways we perceive and represent landscape. By recreating environments through collected fabrics and returning them to the world, I create a personal dialogue with landscape—an acknowledgement of its significance, even if it can never be fully understood or held onto.

Diane Lavoie is a North American visual artist based in Berlin, Germany. She holds an MFA in painting from California State University Long Beach and a BFA in illustration from Massachusetts College of Art. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in private and public collections in the US and Europe.