Dianne Dickeman, one of the co-founders and the visual art curator for Particles on the Wall, is a painter who lives in Seattle. She received a BFA in Painting from the University of Washington, and is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. She has also studied at the Pilchuck Glass School, and held a Printmaking residency at the Centrum Foundation.  Dianne has exhibited in numerous venues in Seattle and the Northwest, including the Wright Exhibition Space, Tacoma Art Museum, Kirkland Art Center, Center on Contemporary Art, Ag47 Gallery, the Bellevue Arts Museum, and the Whatcom Museum. Dianne and her sister, Nancy Dickeman, also teamed up some years ago to co-create an installation at the 911 Media Arts Center in Seattle. The Use of All Necessary Means was a multidisciplinary installation in storefront windows which reflected on the first Gulf War and the use of violence as a means to an end.

She is also an arts professional and cultural worker, with a 25 year history at Artech Fine Art Services in capacities ranging from Operations Manager to Storage Manager and Registrar. She is a member of the Alliance of American Museums, the Washington Museum Association, the Henry Art Gallery and the Seattle Art Museum.

Dianne was born and raised in Richland, graduating from Columbia High School, home of the Bombers.  Her father was a nuclear physicist who came to work at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in  late 1948, and in the early 1960’s managed the N Reactor project, the first dual purpose reactor.  She has vivid memories of life in the small town community, but especially the shrub steppe landscape, the Columbia River, the magnificent sky, and the wind.

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The Columbia River is the heart of the area near Hanford - providing water, food, recreation, spiritual relief and renewal. My painting of the Columbia River speaks about reflections in the water and reflections of the river; it is about the movement and flow of water, but also about that particular river, its importance to the towns near Hanford, and its vulnerability to the pollution created at Hanford.

Discussion of the piece - Columbia River Near Hanford, Late Afternoon by Dianne Dickeman (interview with Mike McCormick)