Diane Victor was born in Witbank, South Africa, in 1964. She received her BA Fine Arts Degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg with a major in Printmaking. In addition to graduating with distinction and winning various awards, Victor also became the youngest recipient of the prestigious Volkskas Atelier Award in 1988. The Volkskas Award granted Victor a ten-month stay at the Cité International des Artes in Paris, allowing her time to work collaboratively with other experienced printmakers and to observe and reflect on a society very different from her own.

Since 1990, Victor has been a part-time lecturer, teaching drawing and printmaking, at various South African institutions including the University of Pretoria, Wits Technikon, Pretoria Technikon, Open Window Academy, Vaal Triangle Technikon, the University of the Witwatersrand, Rhodes University and the University of Johannesburg.

The tension generated by Diane Victor’s impressive body of drawings and prints arises not only from her biting social commentary and the sometimes-macabre nature of her images and narratives, but from an interplay between the tough and the fragile, the hard edges of her visual narratives and the delicate mark-making and fragility of her preferred media