Collaborations with Mario Laplante
Mario Laplante and Diane Fine began our collaborative relationship as graduate students at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. The body of work we make together has been ongoing for more than thirty years. For most of those years, we have been living on opposite coasts of the United States. That distance has compelled us to travel to each other's studios, to attend residencies together, and to find temporary studio spaces in remote locations where we find we can be extraordinarily productive in three to four-week periods.
We approach art-making with very similar skill sets. Both of us are trained printmakers and embrace the process of layering, distinctive textures and the meditative repetition that is at that medium's core. Printmaking is an essential part of our studio practice, however, as our work samples illustrate, we create works on paper that also utilize drawing, painting, digital imaging and collage. Our collaborative studio practice allows us to have fluency in two different dialects (that is, “Mario” and “Diane”), and blends those individual identities so seamlessly that we often need to ask of each other when looking at a final piece, “Did you do that or did I?”