Diane Rickards Levell, Untitled (Peonies 2), 2019

15" x 20", archival scanned flower print on archival paper, signed lower right.

The winning bidder will receive 20% off their framing costs at Phoenix Art Supplies & Framing.

Born in Philadelphia in 1946, Diane Levell was raised in Bucks County, before going on to study architecture and interior design at Endicott College, and earning a Bachelor's of Fine Arts at the University of Delaware in 1970. There she first developed her skills in photography, an interest that quickly blossomed while she pursued her Master's in Fine Arts at George Washington University; though she entered school to study ceramics, she quickly found a new photo-chemical skill set and began forging a new path in alternative process photography. At the time, no faculty taught alternative processes, so Levell pursued independent projects to master the skills needed for the four historical processes that have been mainstays of her artistic career: cyanotype, gum bichromate, photogravure, and Van Dyke printing.

After touring the continent extensively during her graduate studies, Levell and her husband moved to Europe, living for a number of years in Paris, London, the south of France, and Turkey before settling in Heidelberg, Germany. There, she taught an impressive range of art and design classes, and served the U.S. Army as both a graphic designer and the chief photographer in Europe. She exhibited at a range of institutions, most notably in 1989 in a special exhibition at the Stadmuseum Ludwigshafen celebrating the 150th anniversary of Daguerre's published instructions for sensitizing photographic plates: the birth of modern photography. Since returning to the United States she has exhibited at The Platinum Gallery in NYC, the Princeton Arts Council, Bucks County Community College, the Mercer Museum, Delaware County Community College, the Hunterdon Art Museum, and was a prize winner at the annual Phillips' Mill Photography exhibition in New Hope, among many others. Her first solo show at the Michener Art Museum, Intrepid Alchemist: Diane Levell's Bucks County, was on view March 23 through July 28, 2019.