Martha Diamond

Martha Diamond was born in New York, New York in 1944. New York City is both her home and the dominant theme of her art. Her idea of urban architecture was seeded from the heights of Stuyvesant Town, where she was raised, and the skyscrapers lining Central Park, where her father had his office. Later, the highways and suspension bridges leading into Manhattan sharpened Diamond's focus. Diamond received a Bachelor of Arts degree at Carleton College, in rural Northfield, Minnesota, noted for its large manmade Indian Mounds. After a year in Paris, she earned a Master of Arts degree at New York University.

Often labeled as a Neo-Expressionist painter, Diamond is best known for cityscapes in big, sweeping, gestural brush strokes. The cityscapes are not static. Great energy moves on the lush surfaces. Her thick, wet-on-wet method of applying oil paint results in a glistening, liquid feeling. Her architectural forms are anthropomorphic, yet uninhabited. A skyscraper she has painted in her idiosyncratic style nearly screams at the viewer, somewhat reminiscent of Edvard Munch. In her highly abstract way, the artist suggests the urban experience with a conspicuous palette that blurs the line between the medium and the image.

Diamond has soloed at Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME; Robert Miller Gallery and Brooke Alexander, Inc., New York, NY. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Bradford Art Galleries and Museum, Bradford, England; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; and Taft Museum, Cincinnati, OH. The Bank of America World Headquarters, San Francisco, CA includes her work in its corporate collection.

In an Artforum article, "The Paint Thickens," Carter Ratcliff observed that Diamond devised "an extremely stylized use for thick paint. The small size of Martha Diamond's patterned configurations, as well as their isolation on relatively large surfaces, make them both toylike and iconlike. Their schematized content is at its best when it is close to being overwhelmed by oblique evocations of light, landscape texture, even temperature and scent. Diamond pushes the associational properties of oil paint to extremes to achieve these effects."

Influenced by Japanese prints, Diamond often translates her work into print media. Her first visit to the Wing Lake Studio of Stewart & Stewart, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan was in May 1996 to collaborate in a screenprint. Diamond is represented by the Robert Miller Gallery, New York.