Nancy Diamond's work offers a glimpse into a subliminal macrocosm, negotiating a convergence of outer and interior worlds. Whether the inspiration is inanimate or sentient, Diamond’s subjects remain in a state of becoming, straddling the familiar and the alien. The concreteness of the illusion in her images blurs boundaries between documenting nature and her own invention. Her often-repeated themes have included resilience and the passage of time. Diamond’s creations are marked by an intensity of focus intertwined with a whimsicality of representation. Her hallucinatory visons are tethered to realism, lending to works that are not totally alien and based on her observations, yet susceptible to and reliant on her imagination and instinct.
Diamond presents the natural world in a heightened state and combines her ongoing interests in optics and pattern with direct observation and invention. When painting, she concentrates her gaze skyward, observing light and deepening colors that cycle from sunrise to sunset. She has stated, “I think of my work as an open-ended reverie about nature and being, a kind of portal for discovery.” Diamond has built a significant body of work as she has explored what is possible with water media, after previously working primarily in oil. Conceptual exploration is merged with the effects of the paint itself, as pigment reacts with binder, paint with paper, and moisture with atmosphere, sun, and light. Nodding to the work of Arthur Dove, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Helen Frankenthaler, Diamond’s trees, clouds, and flowers are at once familiar and unfamiliar, and often have taken on a subtle anthropomorphism.
Diamond’s exploratory works conjure scenes from the microscopic to the wide open. Though often precise in detail, they are filled with abstract and hallucinatory alterations. Single flowers often float untethered in the absolute center of the picture plane, without obvious means, under a clouded sky, and in a state of serene solitude. Other single flowers are represented not as a part of the landscape but as the dramatic subject of psychedelic portraiture. Diamond gives her inanimate subjects a hyperfocus and dignity that captivates her viewer, drawing them into a realm where the familiar becomes extraordinary. Each petal, leaf and stem is forensically observed and celebrated, as Diamond invites the viewer to linger and explore the intricate details and vacillating abstraction of her creations. While the resonance between botanical and human forms brings an aspect of self-referentiality to the work, Diamond imbues her subjects with a sense of otherworldliness; under her eye, they transcend their earthly origins to become symbols of introspection and transcendence. “From invention and observation in nature, I articulate color, pattern, and form into a distinctly sensitized terrain. I am constantly observing my environment, cataloging, and collecting visual information. My hope is to bring the viewer with me, to show the viewer what I see.”
Nancy Diamond was born and raised in New York City and earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design with a double degree in painting and film. Her work has been shown in exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Grants and awards include the National Endowment for the Arts grant and the Marie Walsh Sharpe/Walenta Space Program residency. She had been a long-time resident of New York City but now lives full-time in a mountaintop meadow in upstate NY, where she is an intimate participant in the infinite changes that take place season-to-season, day-to-day, and second-to-second.