Why bridges are a classical attraction?

You know the Sistine Chapel and those iconic hands of God reaching towards man? I arrived at the melting stage of this piece full of overwhelm of these last few weeks, indecision, doubt, a desire to take two steps back as opposed to one step forward. And then the lamp in my hands changed me. 

I looked at my main element - the bridge, and that bridge wanted to curve, so I intuitively took the canvas off the easel and directed the drips in a more rounded fashion. And my mind wandered to that world-famous painting and it wanted to repeat this tentative touch of Michelangelo, this desire to support the other side, so I flipped the piece again and created another hand of drips.

It struck me that this is why I'm so fascinated with these medieval towns - it's because they create a bridge between man-made and organic. They strive to have this ability to co-exist, to fit in with one another, to belong together. The buildings reaching for the trees, the busyness seeking the void, the light searching out the darks, and a bridge where they greet each other with a meek touching of drips. What does that tell me about my life, my doubts and indecision? 

It nudges me to not be afraid of me, of the different warring sides of me, of my need to steer clear off the beaten path, and strive for a bridge of my own, if only I dare to act...

Do we need to let it go in order to succeed?

I think this is a good ending point for the book. I'm done with about half of it by now and am thinking more and more about the main theme, and the sub-themes.

My drips are for emptiness. They’re an antidote to the busy world I try to populate in each new piece. They create the much needed reprieve from the craziness. They introduce abstraction, they move me from my regular status quo. 

They’re an answer to my traditional upbringing, to my fears of rejecting the mold, of letting go. If I completely give into them, they will be me letting go completely. 

But I can’t give up the line. Its piercing musicality is very important to me, its contrast is absolutely key. I don’t know if I figured out form yet, but the line is certainly there to stay. I still can’t tell which forms speak to me and which I’m able to forego. Is it a triangle shape or a semi-circle that is my favorite? A combo of various sized cubes? Do I absolutely need a horizon line? I’ve already gathered that less is more when it comes to color: maximum of two different juxtapositions plus an accent color. But I don’t want to stick to the same palette, do I? I know I need to break it down to get to complete abstraction, which would mean something to me. But how? And do I need to get to abstraction? Maybe this is a constant conversation - a chat between inner and outer reality, between abstract thoughts and practical sides of me?

The real secret behind my most popular series

 Want me to tell you a little secret? That first series of oils that everyone loves so much - there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. I've already told you that it was all created within one summer, after my return from studying abroad in Paris.

I was in an awful withdrawal state and Andrey Tamarchenko, my teacher, saved me by giving me this magic space, in which I could create. It was a tiny room on the last floor of an abandoned factory building, overlooking the Garden State parkway. A series of gated doors, freight elevators, and somewhat frightening corridors brought me to this little paradise where I could just play.

But that wasn't all. Over that summer I reacquainted myself with my very first crush. Apparently, he came over from Russia every summer and lived in South Jersey with his father's new family. A crazy romance sparked up between us and he would visit me in this little studio and watch me paint. We would slip onto the roof of this abandoned factory, which was just a hop over my window sill, and make love on the roof, with the highway sprawling underneath.

I think you can feel this euthoria in the paintings from this series. There's a hint of danger, secrecy, yet a dare to enter this innocent paradise. To this day, every time I paint, I think back on those days with a certain nostalgia that my whole body can feel. I'm taken back to my daring self, a soul completely open to the world and its possibilities.

My painting practice gives me hope there're a lot more opportunities in this world. It allows me to re-enter my childhood, my adolescence, my college years, and connect them to me today.

This groundbreaking series that was featured in Ithaca's Johnson Museum is housed right here: Archive

Take a look. Perhaps something in it will bring back nostalgic memories for you as well, and would be a nice treat for yourself for the New Year!

If you're in Massachusetts, I'm happy to come over and test out a few things on your walls, tying in my expertise as a long time art consultant. We can see what would work best with the rest of your decor and other art you have in your home. Happy Holidays!!

Love,

D

Could painting actually be better than sex?

Why melt? Because I want to enter the painting. I want the gates of ecstasy to open, to experience the merge of colors and textures, and to discover new possibilities.

First I build a city by looking at it, concentrating on its proper angles, turns, the scale of things. But then I want to dissolve into it, to feel like I'm one with it, existing on this particular day, while I'm staring at it, purposefully, with a mission to truly feel it. And just like Gaudi, I want to re-build it from the drips of paint, forming up like sand castles, directing my thoughts with these rays of hope, droplets of creation.

I've been waiting for this day for so long. It's because no matter how great sex is, with you giving into it completely, this is so much better. I peak time and again with each penetration of a new drip. It's an opening to absolute freedom.

But why not melt it all? It's about questioning boundaries, about giving you a glimpse of what could be vs. what is. It's about not being perfect but always striving for it. Perhaps I'm not strong enough to destroy it, as it pains me when my subjects get completely dismembered: houses losing their windows, foundations merging into roofs. Maybe these are windows into my soul and it's tragic to me when they clogged up. Perhaps it's this struggle between the practical side of me and the crazy destroyer side? They're always at war it seems and my work is an attempt to have them co-exist.

Do you have two warring sides? How do they and where do they play out their struggles?

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I do write quite a bit about the artmaking process, and you could be among the first to see my newest blogs if you sign on to my mailing list !

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And this 36x48 oil and wax on canvas of Parisian rooftops is now finished, beaming with light and raw energy. It's available at $1,900. 

Please feel free to email with your thoughts and comments!

Confessions of a Failed Gallery Director

 I studied to be an artist. I tell everyone this story of how I wanted to be a fashion designer but my mother met a 'starving artist', Andrey Tamarchenko, who convinced her that I needed to learn how to paint everything in order to become one. She had me enroll to take classes while in high school, prepping my portfolio. I was then accepted into all the art schools where I applied, and of course without even knowing how to sew, I surely wasn’t getting into fashion schools. So I just kept going with the life of an artist. But truly it’s a more complex story.

Just like every art student I graduated with a thought that I’ll never make a living as an artist. After a number of different stints I landed a gallery director job and that surely was the dream of every art student and every parent. All that prestige: the gallery openings, art fairs, auctions, fancy clients, celebrities, worldwide travel, crazy money. It’s a perfect life, isn’t it? What more could you possibly wish for? But you know what? It’s a brutal backstabbing world. It’s a life where I didn’t sleep at nights because I knew I wasn’t honest with clients. I suffered from ridiculous bouts of depression – never knowing who my friends at work are, not trusting any information I was given. I sold my soul to the devil and I felt it every single day.

Then one day I was sent to Italy to check out the Venice Biennale and I stayed another week for an art retreat with that same art teacher I met back in high school, my one and only guide through life, Andrey Tamarchenko. Painting every day with him in the hills of Alessandria, I saw just how deep my abyss was. I was balling my eyes out again, every single night of that week. But this time it was different. I cried due to the realization that I cannot live like this anymore. I saw that no amount of money can fix the horrible damage I was inflicting on myself every single day. This art retreat was a deciding factor that finally made me leave the gallery and reevaluate my life.

Yes, it has been tough not getting a six figure salary, and building a business of my own from scratch. But at the end of the day, it’s my painting practice that still keeps me honest with myself. Every week it gives me strength to tackle all kinds of dilemmas that come my way. It’s the only way to stay balanced.

-And here's a little piece I did with Andrey while in Italy. Feel free to email with questions if you're interested. -

Hugs,

Diana

My Favorite Artists on Instagram

As I explore Instagram as an outlet for my art, and as part of #taaigchallenge, I'm seeing some really great work, and I feel it's important to share it as means of inspiration.
I thought once in a while everyone needs some inspiration, so here are some of my favorites:

I love patches of harmonious color like #UweKowski
I love scraped off surfaces a la #Gerhard Richter
I love ghost trees in the style of #WolfKahn
I'd love my line to be as piercing as Hiroshige Fukuhara
I think the saturated scenes of Stevnn Hall are amazing
The color harmonies are simply perfect in Julia Powell's work:
and I'd love my symbols to be as spiritual as #Wassily Kandinsky, whose birthday is today incidentally...

But god damn it, I want it to be my language that combines all those and transforms into something new, blended seamlessly, yet making a contrasting statement. It'll stem from nature but be taken to an imaginary paradise: where borders are barely visible, where sky falls onto earth, and sand can rise to meet crashing waves. It's where trees can spread their curious branches far into the amplified skies, and they can separate the landscape into mini-icons where one's eyes rest while taking a break from the whole spectacle. It's now my color theory and not Quiller's or Kandinsky's. It'll be my melted, scratched, layered world where I can fit in all my hopes and aspirations, my struggles and disappointments.

 

Do all your problems need constant attention?

Foreground and background - what is important first and what needs to recede back - that was the overlaying message of this piece. I want this shift between voids and built up areas. At the same time, however, I want things to melt into one another. Yet, I keep on insisting that something sticks out.

Problems can't all be important at the same time. We're all constantly shifting our priorities but every time it's a struggle as everything seems equally important. Yet, if you treat all elements the same, then they're all flat - there's a lack of focus. It doesn't take a lot - numb one area with a duller hue and that instantly highlights another. Darken the background to contrast it with the foreground. Scrape away unwanted brightness and everything will become more subdued. Create and outline and things will adjust to their new forms and shapes.

And then it doesn't all have to be solved. Some areas can be left alone, remain as they are - not all issues are worth fighting for. Not all problems need our constant attention. There's a point when you simply learn to let it go. Perhaps a solution comes to you in another painting or life situation. Perhaps, it's simply not an issue after all.

Embrace all your different realities!

You start painting an object and move it into an abstract composition of shapes. It seems to lack depth so you add light and shade, you construct believable grooves and folds. Then this something starts to look like another recognizable subject. You run with it and add more elements that will turn it into a fish, or a person, or a hilltop. Once you're past this layer, all you see is that central shape of a physical being and it annoys you tremendously that this is no longer just an abstract painting that is free to be anything. Does our eye always seek something recognizable to hold onto? Do I as a painter and in my real life need to steady myself with reality?

You turn the piece upside down and tell yourself that you'll start from scratch. You can simply see lines and shapes and colors, without needing to go anywhere else. Yet, within ten seconds your eye begins to search out recognizable imagery - formal elements of a painting aren't enough for it to chew on.

Perhaps it's the nature of shapes and lines to be suggestive. With one stroke Japanese calligraphers evoke a mountain top because they know our eyes will complete the scene on their own. So why should I try to run away from suggestive imagery? Why not embrace as many realities as come to mind? When the landscape is full of incomplete spaces, our eyes are able to take it in and add to it in just the same way they see things in an abstract shape. It's about doing more with less. Wouldn't that be a nice life motto?

Let your inner child play as long as she wants

Reflecting on a memory of a real landscape brings so many questions. Even after I figured out the mood for the painting, and limited my palette accordingly, I was still struggling with just how precise this depiction needs to be. As much as I wanted to leave the reality of the scene, things like perspective, shapes and textures of specific subjects were forcing me to stop and reconsider my every move.

When does this adherence to reality take a break, and lets the imagination take over? How can I open a door to creativity if a constant logical critic sits on my shoulder and demands accuracy and academic realism? How did Kandinsky accomplish this feat? To have a landscape and to not have it at the same time? To let shapes, colors and lines take over the composition? To have a real scene turn mythical, become a dreamscape?

I guess a lot of it is a dance of inner voices, but in a dance there's always a leading partner. How can the lead shift to a more abstract thinking section of the brain? Perhaps these voices relinquish control and don't take turns? When there's a real marriage of color and line - the trick is to not turn on the switch back to observation, and to just let yourself sink into the simple pleasures of mixing colors, the way a little child would, for hours.Yes, that is it. Just like I force myself (not always successfully) to not interfere and let my children play their game of choice for as long as they need, I need to not rush my inner child, and let her play as long as she wants. Then just stop before judgment kicks back in.

Then the goal is to repeat this for every painting session...and for every child's invented game.

Everything needs its individual attention

The question of giving every student different treatment and a varied set of tasks based on his/her personality has been haunting me for a while. Time and time again I see that inevitably one or two students in each class need a lot more time on each project than others. I feel awful hurrying them along, as typically these are the students who truly pay attention to details, are quite the perfectionists and want every one of their pieces to truly become a work of art. But then what do I do with the rest of the group? I can't constantly split up, on occasion into three separate corners - where each student is doing something different based on his/her skill set and interests. It makes me crazy, I'm feeling like my head is about to explode in all these different directions.

This painting has been attempting to give me answers to that question. I went into it with my typical expressive approach, covering the canvas at once with slashes of my favorite palette knife. It all somewhat worked, but all the elements seemed to lack their own personality. And it occurred to me that I can't treat the surface of the water in a completely identical way in which I'm handling the tree growth, or the clouds floating along. They each move in their separate way: trees reaching up, clouds circling along, water drifting in horizontal lines. I need to copy their movement with my lines, being mindful of each and every personality, so that it could be a valid form in the composition, so that all these actors can have a dialogue with each other.

And yet, these are all parts of one whole painting, and all these personalities have to coexist in it. Trees and sky reflect in the water, merging and balancing out colors, shapes and lines of the final piece. It's just like all people ultimately coexist in one society, somehow learning along the way their ways to cope with that society's demands. So then even though a conversation with each student can be slightly different - should my final goal be to teach them integration into their group? That would ultimately give them an important life lesson, correct?

How do you set your priorities?

This painting has been haunting me in its purpose because it's a sudden internal shift from trees and all their symbolism to a cityscape. Did I need to do that for more people to understand me, or was it something inside of me that wanted a new or rather re-visited challenge? The answer to this question I don't know even now after the painting is finished.

What I do know is that it was a true lesson in setting priorities. What is more important to me - the infinite sky, the haunting water, or this magical town highlighted by rays of sunshine? It was a constant adjustment of what hides and what comes out. Especially fascinating was how the darkening of one element brought out another. 

One day my friend and teacher, Andrey Tamarchenko, came to visit, and said that textures can be varied throughout - treatment of water and sky should be softer than the rough outlines of a city with its decaying walls. I ended up making the sky and water more pale, and suddenly the city became clearer, as if coming out of a mist. But it bothered me because the city wasn't my focal point. It was actually the opposite - what I loved was the cityscape's complete integration into the landscape, how it effortlessly coexisted with the cloudy sky and the murky water. I changed it yet again to level out the planes, and that made me happy. So is the lesson to take away from this process the opposite of what I'd initially thought, and in fact you can really have it all? Or that perhaps you always need to make a list of priorities?

Painting is my process of empowerment

A great article in the Free Daily Press has just been published with my thoughts on what painting means to me, and what it means for me to be empowered. I never gave it much thought before I was given an opportunity to participate in this one of a kind outdoor public exhibit in Newton at Chestnut Hill Square. Please do go see it before it closes on October 17th. Here're some sneak peek photos from the opening event. Photos courtesy of Mark Wilson Images.

 

Controlled Impulses

I'm very impulsive by nature. Something comes over me and I follow the urge, I trust it to lead me to a good place. Most often than not it does. Yet, sometimes, I lose momentum, things start falling apart, and I blame it on the initial impulsive decision. Should I? Or is it that loss of faith in my intuition that dooms the task at hand?

I've just read a great NY Times article about restoration being done on Jackson Pollock's 'Alchemy', one of my favorite paintings of all times. Everyone always talks about automatic techniques Pollock had used, the pure happy accidents that followed, his constant drunken state. I never thought his pieces to be accidental, and I'm happy the article shows scientific support of this belief. Every drip area, every color combination was premeditated, even in very large works. Surely, his intuitive senses played a huge part, but so did his formal education, his analysis of how an onlooker's eye should move in a piece to make it lively and compositionally sound.

I just finished a piece that I was told differs greatly from all my other work: it feels larger, it's light is coming from within, it breathes. I'm thrilled with it, and I believe it's my trust and follow through on intuition that brought it to this state. Sure, I used my traditional melted drips, but they were carefully controlled, adjusted in certain areas, intensified in others. Layers kept piling on, yet each uncovered nuances underneath. The palette was limited: colors with which I had never experimented before were carefully juxtaposed. Finally, I left a lot of empty room for it to breathe. It's simply marvelous: it feels like a breath of crisp air. Intuition is certainly a force to reckon with yet nurture...

Time

Amazing how a process of creating a work of art is also a time to draw insights into life's general issues. It never fails. I inevitably come out of every session with an 'aha' moment.

We were on a tropical vacation on a beach (yes, I wish we did this in February as opposed to December, ...alas, the memory of it lingers). I, of course, brought my watercolors, but with two kids and the myriad of scheduled activities, it was impossible to let myself relax and paint. I did force myself, just once.
I set up on a beach, obsessed with the colors and shapes of a stormy sky and unnaturally calm green water, and I really wanted to quickly get these warring emotions onto my painting. It had to be super quick before the 2 year old had another tantrum and the 6 year old got bored with the beach. And nothing was coming out. It was a flat surface that simply wouldn't breathe.

And all of a sudden this little inner voice said to me: 'You just need time. Sometimes you simply need time to let it come into its own'. And I did. I decided that I don't care if there's a tantrum. That once during this vacation I'm allowed to think of just me.I let the watercolor develop, with time and layers. It then dawned on me that everything in this life needs time. There's no need to constantly rush in to solve a problem. Time will tell, will heal, will let things play out and reveal their true meaning. I've gotten so much calmer since that little epiphany. I don't force anyone into a specific plan. I don't force myself to accomplish things in accordance with a strict deadline. Time will show the proper way.

How we all need a breather once in a while

Yet again an act of painting acting as life coach. I've been following my own mantra while painting - striving for balance of color and line throughout, the lights and darks, the thin and thick. It was all moving along just fine but it was somehow off.

Only six or seven hours into it, nearing the end of my energy reserve - it hit me. The painting was too cluttered. I piled up too many things into this one creation and each area was fighting for attention, unable to sit still.  I wasn't letting it breathe. I was pushing and pushing more elements into this poor thing and it wasn't letting my eyes rest. So I added emptiness, big neutral, peaceful puddles. All of a sudden, the painting came to life - it had its ying and yang. It was full of energy, captivating but not overwhelming.

And it immediately struck me that this is a direct mirror of my everyday life. I never let myself take a breather. I run at full speed, my task organizer bursting at the seams, like a hamster on its little wheel. And I set the same schedules for the kids, because I feel this pressure to keep up. And everyone is irritated, exhausted, struggling.

So as a result of this conversation with my painting, and in order to not burn out, I decided I'll take a nice long coffee break once in a while. I'll allow myself to have a relaxed lunch. I'll find time for yoga and sauna in my schedule, and I'll ease off the kids. I won't rush to sign them up for more activities so that I feel on par with other involved parents. I'll let them play and relax whenever possible. That's truly my wish for everyone this Holiday season - please take the time to breathe. Even a half hour a day helps. Invariably relaxing brings you to new solutions to old problems.

The need to RTFM

My husband is an engineer and his favorite saying when something isn't going right is: RTFM (read the .... manual).

I'm often asked to teach according to a step by step, or follow along manual, and I always refuse. It just seems to me that instructions of that sort kill any individual creativity, or ability to think outside the box and come to an unexpected, yet original solution. My motto has been to demonstrate the use of materials, give some background art history on the project, and see where imagination can take one as an artist.

Yet, with this latest painting I feel like I did what I preach against, and I can't say I'm happy with the outcome. I took an old watercolor from 1999 as inspiration, from the time when I loved the combination of nature and architecture. I thought that even if a rigid structure is there, I can let myself get to a point where I use it sufficiently, and then be able to let it go by melting it away.

But apparently this need for a manual has a strong hold even on me, not just on the engineer types. Every time I tried to lose a column or a window, or have the trees or grass spill over onto the existing planes- something within me rebelled. No matter how hard I tried, I proceeded as I'd been taught with as correct a perspective as possible, the shapes of the original building in the watercolor, and the forms of the initial trees.

So the question I guess is perhaps we as humans are programmed to follow instructions and I'm wrong to confuse myself and others with too much freedom? Perhaps creativity can succeed even within the confines of a manual?


 

A Life of Contrast

It's been a few months that this post has been brooding in my head. I've finally realized that the quest for contrast is what I constantly look for in life - things lacking hard edges simply don't interest me.

I recently came back from an Antique art fair, where tons of soft 18th-19th century paintings graced red felt walls of many booths. I was so incredibly bored with them. They didn't have the punch of hard lines or complimentary colors juxtaposed next to each other, no delineated lights and darks. I couldn't sink into these paintings, couldn't dissolve.



I also incidentally spent a few days with an atmospheric abstract painter, and what I thought was always lacking in her work - a grounding of sorts - she noticed was overly prevalent in mine. She hated my rendering of trees for instance - saying they create a grid which interrupts the flow of the painting....After that critique I attempted to do without my typical hard branches and all I see is mud and chaos.

I guess we each seek and value key features of our personalities in our works and the works of others. It's never the opposites attract phenomenon. OCD'd like myself find order amidst chaos. A Buddhist finds a calm meditative space.

But then...I used to love radical people - those with a strong personality and unwavering opinions. Maybe it's because I'm too mainstream and blah? But now I see that these people are simply not tuned in to the world around them, they don't see shades of grey, don't see any nuances in human relationships. And I get to thinking that perhaps that is what's supposed to happen to my art - more nuances and less expression? That is what growing into your own means?

Melting away...all masks

As much as I try, I can't get away from reality. I can't reach within and call forth images sitting deep in some innermost layer.

So my new answer to all this representation is melt the reality...melt it away like the Wicked Witch of the West, remove all those built up textures, all these layers of masks.

The process is really difficult on me as it requires so much patience. It's the antidote to my fierce piercings with a palette knife.

What it does is slowly bring out all these unexpected nuances in color relationships, plays of textures that are so different from what I typically employ. Drips fall like tiny tears, so difficult to extract, always from unpredictable little caves, opening newer hideaway places, shifting priorities. It's like reliving a dream, peeling its meaning bit by bit, the unwilling truths. Bubbles of bile all of a sudden explode into fireworks of new answers. If all masks could shed like this, leaving room for brutal honesty with self and with the world.
This is a work in progress...the tricky thing is knowing where to stop...The media is oil paint and wax, which is then melted down with a heat lamp.

The said and the unsaid

I went to the Sackler museum at Harvard a few days ago, thanks to my dear friend, Anna. What got me the most once again were the Chinese screens - their delicateness yet
simplicity. Every time I'm in front of those I'm amazed at how much empty space there is and how it makes perfect sense - it lets your mind complete the scene, there is no need to spell out every detail on the lace neckpiece or every wave in the endless sea. Don't get me wrong - the exquisite lines are also there to depict tree branches full of emotion and the vibrant garments of little soldiers, ane yet the silence is golden.

In Western tradition we're so preoccupied with perspective, form and shadows, that we give no credit to the onlooker at all, we leave no room for their imagination. It'd be so lovely to just be able to let it be - there's so much mystery and beauty in the void.

Anna mentioned in her post similar tendencies for importance of silence in Asian movie making, literature and music. I also wonder about plain conversation - do we say too much? Can the other person guess our correct emotions, moods and thoughts, even if they're masked by shallow conversation?

 

The ying and yang - finding harmony

I read today that caligraphers in China attempted for centuries to get away from interpretations of their lines as trees, clouds, pretty much any type of representational form that can be detected in their forms. When they finally accomplished this - they called it harmony in caligraphy itself. It's that strive for reality that constantly challenges a painting. If only I could see past it into the work itself, if I could shut down reality on the outside and access inner realities - that would be harmony.

The well known trick of turning the canvas sideways and upside down helps see more clearly. Then you can inspect every square inch in the piece and make sure it works. Or you squint your eyes and somehow see the whole message, not its multitutes of questions and realities. And if you stare into one random spot like the yogis and you search for that place inside that has harmony, that you can call home.

Enjoy the latest...