Diana Freedman-Shea

www.dianafreedmanshea.com       

sheadon@ix.netcom.com

Diana Freedman-Shea graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Art Education and began teaching art in the NYC High Schools at the age of 21. She then went on the receive an MFA from Brooklyn College and managed to pursue a career in painting and printmaking while teaching full time.  

 

She was an art reviewer for 10 years,  thoroughly enjoying  the engagement with other artists and their work. Diana retired from Stuyvesant High School in 2002 and has  devoted herself making art full time

 

Throughout her career she has explored representation with an eye to abstraction. The subject matter has  varied from animals, to figures, to cityscape and landscape, but her concentration co was on the formal as well as the descriptive aspects of the work.

She has exhibited at the Bronx Zoo, the Wisconsin Primate Center, the Prince Street Gallery, Noho Gallery, Kennedy Gallery, NYC, The Minnesota Museum, The Hammond Museum, The Katonah Gallery,  The Flinn Gallery, The Interchurch Center, among other venues.

 

Artist Statement

I work in the space between realism and abstraction. I respond spontaneously to what I see, and then go through a process that gives form to my impressions.

 

My urban views and landscapes are faithful to a specific time, place and condition of light. 

 

At the same time, they reflect my concern with geometry, the relationship between shapes, and the accidents of paint.

 

The tension between fidelity to time and place, and the structural and painterly concerns of abstraction, has been my challenge.  This makes the work lively and open ended.

 

In my paintings of animals, I capture their majesty through color, texture and the crowding of forms.

 

My still-lifes are formal exercises in color, composition, and mood.

 

The search for abstract form is the thread that runs through my work. I want my paintings to communicate on an abstract, descriptive and emotional level.