Cathy Diamond
Cathy Diamond currently lives and works in Queens, NY. Her work fuses elements of nature and figuration into biomorphic paintings and works on paper. She has exhibited regularly in New York City for three decades. To close out 2022 Diamond exhibited in Luscious Wasteland, with Laurie Fader, at Radiator Arts, NYC. She also exhibited several paintings in Human/Nature at Alice Gauvin Gallery in Portland, Maine, and curated Earth Matters, at Green Door Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. Selected solo and two-person shows in New York City include Sideshow Gallery, Andre Zarre, Farrell Pollock Fine Art, Valentine Gallery and The Painting Center. Selected group exhibits include Zurcher Gallery, Buddy Warren Fine Art, 490 Atlantic, Gallery Boreas, Susquehannah Art Museum, The National Academy of Art, Van der Plas Gallery, Joyce Goldstein Gallery, and Haveford College. With Van-Straaten Gallery and Oehme Graphics Diamond exhibited works on paper at international print fairs including Miami Basel, Cleveland Museum of Art, Park Avenue Armory and Boston Print Fair. Diamond has also curated several exhibits, including Take Your Pulse at Joyce Goldstein Gallery, Out There at Supermoon Art Space, and the recently concluded Earth Matters at Green Door Gallery. Interviews can be found at Artspiel - Artists on Coping, Gallery Gary Giordano on Youtube, and studiocritical.blogspot.com. Diamond has received several Residency Fellowships across the country. Writings about her work have appeared in Two Coats of Paint, The Portland Press Herald, Art New England, New York Sun, Artspiel, NY Arts, Abart Online, among others. She is an Adjunct Lecturer of Painting and Drawing at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Diamond received her art education at The University of Michigan and The New York Studio School.
The Portland Press Herald, Jorge S. Arango: Diamond's works "are really a hybrid of drawing and painting, and their surfaces buzz, sizzle and quiver with a feverish energy. They are clearly landscapes, but abstracted in ways that capture nature's ability to constantly morph and evolve. In this way, they viscerally convey a kind of aggressive fecundity of nature...Diamond's works are breathtakingly gorgeous and just a little scary in their suggestion of nature's uncontrollable, untamable power."
Two Coats of Paint, Margaret McCann: Diamond's "steady, repetitive delivery of jagged biomorphic structures conveys dependability. The swift, coordinated rhythms that contest flat, static shapes are reminiscent of Jackson Pollock’s earlier work, where gesture, rather than chance drips, manipulates form. Emotional distance spreads through an overall greenness that suggests nature’s amplitude and inscrutable designs....Bolstered by bold tones, a range of saturated warm and cool reds and greens foster a richness that subverts the distress that Francis Bacon’s similarly thorny forms can convey. We are given a sharp, radiant vision of something beyond understanding."
Pollination catalogue essay, Peter Bonner: "The forms are situated beyond the transient, occupying a space inhabited by our imagination, prehistoric in sentiment yet solidly grounded in the everyday world that Diamond inhabits...The changes we go through daily and the coming to terms with oneself culminates in paintings that radiate a celebratory tone, each image rising up out of complexity, ancient in their steadfastness yet fresh in their outlook, a true statement of defiance, resolution and celebration."