Diana Deikman : Oil Paintings
From Abstraction to Realism in Portraiture
Abstracts
My father had a deep love for all forms of art. He often wrote eloquent letters to our family, sharing his thoughts on exhibits he had seen in galleries and museums. I asked him to write something for my website, and I’m honored to share his words with you here:
Some might think Diana Deikman has been influenced by Nicholas Krushenick (1929-1999) and/or Frank Stella (1936), because they pursued the same elusive goal – capturing abstract beauty through controlled forms and vivid colors. Neither they nor anyone else have had the slightest influence on Deikman though it might plausibly be argued she accidentally belongs to the same school, even given, wholly unlike her approach, Krushenick was concerned with flatness and Stella is concerned with geometry. She tries to capture beauty in her own way.
She perceives in curvature the deepest appeal to the gratification of our eyes, because the human form – a baby’s cheek, a woman’s breasts and hips, pectorals, biceps, thighs, and the moon, the world, the galaxies, the horses’ rumps and necks, the rose and so many delightful things essential to life are evoked by sheer curvature. She perceives in brilliant color the primal lure that impels the bee to the flower, the mate to the peacock – again critical components to life. Our DNA shares those genes of allure with bees and peacocks.
Her inspiration is music. She wants to be as abstract as pure music, to be as disciplined as a fine composer and to achieve the same result – pleasure – pleasure to the sense of sight comparable to that music gives the sense of hearing. She seeks truth in the same way expressed by John Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Eugene Deikman
Some might think Diana Deikman has been influenced by Nicholas Krushenick (1929-1999) and/or Frank Stella (1936), because they pursued the same elusive goal – capturing abstract beauty through controlled forms and vivid colors. Neither they nor anyone else have had the slightest influence on Deikman though it might plausibly be argued she accidentally belongs to the same school, even given, wholly unlike her approach, Krushenick was concerned with flatness and Stella is concerned with geometry. She tries to capture beauty in her own way.
She perceives in curvature the deepest appeal to the gratification of our eyes, because the human form – a baby’s cheek, a woman’s breasts and hips, pectorals, biceps, thighs, and the moon, the world, the galaxies, the horses’ rumps and necks, the rose and so many delightful things essential to life are evoked by sheer curvature. She perceives in brilliant color the primal lure that impels the bee to the flower, the mate to the peacock – again critical components to life. Our DNA shares those genes of allure with bees and peacocks.
Her inspiration is music. She wants to be as abstract as pure music, to be as disciplined as a fine composer and to achieve the same result – pleasure – pleasure to the sense of sight comparable to that music gives the sense of hearing. She seeks truth in the same way expressed by John Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Eugene Deikman
