Diane McCormick was born in Co. Tyrone in 1966 and studied at the University of Ulster graduating in 1988 with a BA Hons Degree in Fine Craft Design. She completed a Post Graduate in 1998 working on the crossover techniques of print and ceramics.
Since then she has undertaken numerous commissions throughout Ireland for hospitals, schools and museums, with clients including Macmillan Cancer Care, the Health Service Executive ( Ireland) HSE ( Northern Ireland), Marie Curie, National Museums NI and Queens University.
Diane seeks to provide art for healthcare environments in a thoughtful and humorous way seeking the participation of patients, staff and visitors with the use of poetry, words, images and photos.
Her main interest is ceramics but she has also worked with bronze, metal etching, printing and glass, and created designs for vinyl flooring, wallpaper, Perspex and Formica.
Strong patterns combined with fine detail and craftsmanship are brought together to make site specific artworks that connect with the users of the buildings through memory, pattern, movement and colour.

Diane McCormick is a ceramic artist best known for her large scale public artworks but who also makes smaller scale ceramic objects, refined variations on a familiar themes: the container, for example or ceramic panels. The Byzantine elements within her work come from a fascination with the iridescent surfaces of lustre glazes, the visual depth of which is built up in layers and through repetitive complex firings. Most recently, she has developed a range of high fired surfaces using a satin finish barium glaze giving rich blues which she uses with print techniques, painted slip and complex textured surfaces.

“At the centre of my work are connections with the natural world and how the feel of a certain object can be recreated in ceramic. I love cycling and walking and I make mental notes about things I’ve encountered on my journeys. These could be patterns in a flock of birds, interesting insects, the colours and textures of landscapes or how certain sounds can invoke memories.
I try to capture a snapshot of my emotion to that passing moment a fleeting encounter with a wild animal or a changing pattern in the landscape. I live in the countryside and have an endless supply of inspiration in the fields and skies around me.

I am curious about the ceramic process and it’s different stages: the way colours, textures and patterns can be formed in clay at different stages in the process. I use plaster to make textured and off beat shapes that are then used to mould my ceramics into.
My ceramics are hand built collages in clay, combining several print techniques such as mono-printing and collography with multicoloured overlays of slips and glazes resulting in a deeply layered and embellished surface.”