This artist deconstructs the human body and rebuilds it with flowers & Plants │ Diana Strandin

At Women in Arts Network, Flora and Fauna brought together an incredible range of artists exploring the connections that exist between people and the natural world. Among the selected artists is Diana Strandin, whose collages approach that relationship through an unexpected visual language, bringing flowers, photographs, and fragments of the human figure together in surreal and often striking compositions.

With a background in fine art, Diana initially focused on sculpture and photography while studying at DMU in Leicester, UK. Collage, however, was always present alongside her other creative explorations, and it eventually became the medium she continued to pursue after university.

There is something particularly fitting about collage for an artist interested in connection. Separate images that once belonged to completely different contexts are cut apart, rearranged, and brought together to create an entirely new reality.

In Diana’s hands, human bodies meet flowers and natural forms, creating surreal compositions that feel familiar and strange at the same time.

Contrast also plays an important role throughout her work. Strength exists alongside fragility, just as attraction can exist beside repulsion. These opposing qualities reflect something Diana recognises in both people and nature: neither is entirely delicate nor entirely powerful. Both can be vulnerable, resilient, beautiful, and unsettling at once.

Her return to art after becoming a mother has also brought a new sense of courage and openness to her practice. Rather than limiting herself to a fixed creative path, she continues to explore what can happen when unexpected fragments meet and familiar images are given entirely new meanings.

Now, let’s get to know Diana through our conversation about collage, surrealism, the human figure, nature, creative contrasts, and the importance of continuing to make art even as life changes around us.

Q1. Diana, could you share a little about your background and how your journey as an artist began?

I studied fine art at DMU in Leicester, UK. Whilst studying i was focusing a lot on sculpture and photography but i have always done collage on the side and it is collage i have continued with after university.

Q2. Your work combines flowers, photographs, and fragments of the human figure. What draws you to these elements?

I feel that they we are connected. Humans are connected to nature and photography is connected to our memories. Mind, body, soul connection.

Q3. Many of your collages feel both delicate and powerful at the same time. Is that balance something you think about while creating?

Yes, i use contrasts a lot in my work, and that contrast applies very well to this theme since humans and nature are both powerful and fragile. I also work with the contrasts of repulsion/attraction in some of my other collages.

Q4. What do you enjoy most about the discovery and surprise that comes with creating collage?

I enjoy the surrealistic vibe, you can create anything you want from fragments of images that dont belong together, rearrange, deconstruct, always with an uncanny outcome.

Q5. Was there a particular artwork or series that changed the way you approach your practice?

Not really a turning point but after having children and starting to make art again I have become a lot braver and more open to broaden my practice.

Q6. Looking back at your work, what themes or questions do you find yourself returning to again and again?

Yes, working with contrasts and the human figure combined with natural forms are always present.

Q7. Success can mean different things at different stages of an artist’s career. What does success look like for you today?

Success for me is to never give up and to keep going.

Q8. What advice would you give to emerging artists who are still finding their creative voice and learning to trust their own path?

Keep going, be patient and do what you enjoy.

As our conversation with Diana came to a close, we kept thinking about the strange beauty of bringing together things that were never meant to belong.

That is, after all, what collage does so well. It takes something familiar, removes it from its original context, and gives it another life. A photograph becomes more than a memory. A flower becomes part of a human form. Separate fragments begin communicating with one another, creating relationships that could never have existed in the original images.

There is something deeply human about that process. Our lives rarely unfold as one continuous, perfectly arranged story. They are made from experiences, relationships, memories, interruptions, and unexpected beginnings. We carry pieces of who we once were alongside who we are becoming, constantly rearranging them as life changes around us.

Diana’s work feels connected to that idea. By bringing the human figure and natural forms together, her collages challenge the boundaries we often create between ourselves and the living world. They remind us that humans and nature share many of the same contradictions. Both can be powerful and fragile. Beautiful and unsettling. Familiar and completely unpredictable. And perhaps we need those contradictions.

We are often encouraged to make things easier to understand, to place them into clear categories and decide exactly what they mean. But some of the most interesting art refuses to do that. It allows opposing ideas to exist together and trusts us to sit with the uncertainty.

For collectors and art lovers, Diana’s collages offer that kind of experience. Their unexpected combinations may be what first catches your attention, but it is the tension between the familiar and the surreal that keeps you looking. Every fragment carries traces of another image and another story, yet together they become something entirely new.

Perhaps that is what makes collage such an interesting reflection of life itself. Nothing exists entirely on its own. The meaning often comes from the connections we create between the pieces.

Follow Diana through the links below and explore more of her collage practice.