RAIR | 2002

Diane Marsh | New Mexico

Figurative painter Diane Marsh (1954- ) graduated with a BFA from Daemen College in Amherst, New York, in 1976 and a MFA from the State University of New York, Buffalo, in 1978. In 1985 she received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in Washington DC. By 2018 Diane held over a dozen solo exhibitions and participated in more than sixty group exhibitions.

Diane Marsh's work is in the collections of the Hess Collection Museum in Napa, California; The Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln, Nebraska; the Albrecht-Kemper Museum in St. Joseph, Missouri; the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Roswell Museum and Art Center in Roswell, New Mexico; the Museum of Nebraska Art in Kearney, Nebraska; the West Texas Museum Association in Lubbock, Texas; the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History in Albuquerque, New Mexico; the State Capitol Collection in Santa Fe, New Mexico and many other public collections. Her work is also represented in several private collections. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Nebraska Arts Council, and others. (Bio from RAiR 50th Anniversary catalog, 2017)

Unsettling Appearance

Diane Marsh depicts people in her artwork. But her emotionally charged, psychologically revealing, hyper-realistic paintings are far from stiff, traditional portraiture. Instead, Marsh uses her prodigious technical skills to show us people in the midst of intense introspection, coping with unstated difficulties and finding solace outside themselves.

There is a universal understanding that comes through the work. The paintings aren't necessarily easy to look at. They're beautifully done, but not traditionally beautiful. But it is in their slightly unsettling appearance that they achieve their emotional resonance.

In "The Awakening" (1996) Marsh provides more information. The woman clutches her arms across her chest, lifting her head upward. Above her sits an off-white field in which three small images - a deer's head, a rose and a baby - float vertically in the space. Into the paint are scratched the works "scar" and "mercy" and, along the edges, the phrases "you shall know the truth, the truth shall set you free" and "out of suffering compassion may be born."

Small but powerful, "The Awakening" conveys a move out of sadness through a revelation of hope.

In a sense, that's the theme of all of Marsh's work.

L. Kent Wolgamott,

Lincoln Journal Star, Sunday, April 8, 2001

Roswell Museum

Rair exhibition • “Diane Marsh, Paintings" November 15 - December 29, 2002