Featured Artist : Liena Dieck

Painting on silk with dyes is my absolute favorite activity. For the most part, I taught myself painting on silk using American, German, and French books, as well as instruction manuals created in the Moscow Institute of Textile Industry. I started seriously working on silk after taking a workshop with Sissi Siska in 2001. My goal is to make silk painting accepted in the fine art world as an equal with oils, watercolours, or pastels. I have been working in this medium for several years now, using various traditional techniques (serti, wax, watercolour, etc.), but direct painting on silk became my signature method, and I rely on it to create fine art paintings, including portraiture.

Dharma Trading Company has been my supplier from the very beginning, and I completely rely on its expertise and efficiency with my orders, and trust its employees in their recommendations of new products. In my work, I mostly use Sennelier's Tinfix Design dyes and solvent based clear gutta serti (applied using squeeze bottles with professional metal tip gutta applicators of different sizes - the screw-on version), Jacquard Silk Colours (green label), and recently, I also started working with Dupont products (dyes, solvent based clear gutta, etc). I prefer to paint on Habotai Silk (8, 10 & 16 mm).

For direct painting on silk, besides different natural products, I use Jacquard's "No-Flow" Primer and "Anti-Fusant" ("Stop-Flow") from Sennelier, as well as Sodium Alginate Thickener when I paint with thickened dyes. "Reduran" hand cream is a must for any silk painter who forgets to wear gloves.

To emphasize the decorative aspect of some of my work for interior design, I rely on Lumiere Metallic Fabric Paints (Metallic Gold, Metallic Copper, Metallic Bronze, etc).

Some of my paintings incorporate traditional batik techniques and are done with beeswax and sticky wax applied with brushes, an electric tjanting tool, and batik droppers.

All my paintings on silk have been steamed for at least five hours in an upright electric steamer - I work only with dyes that require setting by steam, because it helps the dyes to achieve their true colours and unparallel brilliance on silk. When work on silk is properly steamed, there is almost no bleeding of dyes during the rinse. Also, if framed (with archival quality materials and UV-protective glass/plexiglass) and exhibited properly (away from direct sources of heat and light) silk paintings retain their original colours much longer than other works of art.

For several years, I have been a fellow member of the American Artists Professional League (the Salmagundi Club, New York, NY), a member of the Surface Design Association (Sebastopol, CA) and Silk Painters Guild for Fine Artists. My work has been exhibited throughout the United States and can be found in corporate and private collections in England, Belgium, Monaco, Russia, and the USA. To see my artwork, please visit www.LD-art.com.