The galleries “Mojacar” and “Tepoztlan” on my web site include paintings from Spain and Mexico where the sun was intense and the foliage rampant. These works attempt to interpret the extraordinary forces at work in nature rather than specific sites. Color is the primary concern, often the color red. Red resonates with vibrant health; it can be sun, abundant flora, pomegranate, fire or the secrets of the heart. These works are abstracted landscapes particularly concerned with the generative power of the sun.
Other series on the web site, “The Shimmering World” and “Immensity of Small Moments” are totally abstract. The forms grew out of a fascination with calligraphy and various alphabets. They are related to the marks of language, but are improvised and meant to embody movement and emotional states. Often worked with gold and metallic paints, the gold is used to symbolize a celestial world.
The “Redness and Myth” gallery includes the Leda and the Swan series in which I attempt to reinterpret the Leda and Zeus myth away from violent rape and into a realm of consent and mutual desire and benefit.
I live in Nyack, New York near the Hudson River and have a studio in the Garnerville Arts Center, a pre-civil war brick textile factory in Haverstraw, N.Y. which has been transformed into spaces for artists and artisans. The studio complex can be seen in a video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iSQNmB4d5. My studio building, shared with others, has a peaked ceiling 36 ft. high constructed in the mid 1800s with hand-hewn trusses. A stream, once powering the factory, runs next to the studio. The arts center has developed into an exciting community of artists with several immense galleries, www.gagaartscenter.org.
Most of my exhibiting has been in the New York area. I have had a long association with Soho 20/Chelsea Gallery, an artist run gallery founded in the 1970s to promote women artists, www.soho20gallery.com.
Solo shows include GAGA Gallery in Garnerville, NY, Pomona Cultural Center, Pomona, NY, Donnell Library Gallery, NYC, Soho 20/Chelsea Gallery, NYC, Interchurch Center, NYC, Light on Lyndon Gallery, Greensboro, NC, California State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, and William Carlos Williams Center Gallery, Rutherford, NJ. Group shows include Bridge Art Fair, NYC, Museo Regional de Michoacan, Mexico, Hopper House, Nyack, NY, AIR Gallery, NYC, Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, Brooklyn, NY, Rockland Center for the Arts, West Nyack, NY, Flushing Town Hall, Queens, NY, and others.
I have been fortunate to be awarded residencies at Fundacion Valparaiso in Mojacar, Spain, Karolyi Foundation, Vence, France, and Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY. I received a Stevens Traveling Fellowship from Wellesley College and a Myron M. Kaplan Charitable Directed Fund grant for a sabbatical painting year in 2005/6. A grant from the Council on Basic Education allowed me to study mosaic or “zalij”, in Morocco in 1997.
Following a BA in Art History from Wellesley College, magna cum laude, I went to Brooklyn Museum Art School and later to Hunter College for an MA in Painting, studying with Ray Parker and Doug Ohlson.
Website
http://www.dianechurchill.com
