ART Santa Fe

 Installation at ART Santa Fe 2012. From left: Dara Mark, Janice Wall, Diane McGregor, Paula Roland.

 Installation at ART Santa Fe 2012. From left: Diane McGregor, Paula Roland, Danielle Shelley, Shaun Gilmore.

Last month, the Lady Minimalists Tea Society artist collective exhibited at the international art fair, ART Santa Fe. This was the debut exhibition for our group. Six other women artists and I belong to the collective, and we meet once a month to talk about our work and discuss exhibition opportunities.  It's a great group of women, and we all respect and admire each others' work. Minimalism functions as a conceptual and aesthetic starting point for some in the group and as a point of reaction for others. Each artist has adapted the minimalist aesthetic differently, yet we retain a shared sense of pared down processes, materials and/or color.  Our booth at ART Santa Fe was very well received, and we got a lot of exposure and critical interest. I am very proud to show with this group of extraordinary women: Shaun Gilmore, Dara Mark, Paula Roland, Danielle Shelley, Signe Stuart, and Janice Wall. For more information about our group, please visit http://www.ladyminimalists.com.

Lacuna

Sunyata (Emptiness), oil on canvas, 48x48 inches, © 2012 Diane McGregor

Rain Light by W.S. Merwin

All day the stars watch from long ago

my mother said I am going now

when you are alone you will be all right

whether or not you know you will know

look at the old house in the dawn rain

all the flowers are forms of water

the sun reminds them through a white cloud

touches the patchwork spread on the hill

the washed colors of the afterlife

that lived there long before you were born

see how they wake without a question

even though the whole world is burning

My Mother passed away a few months ago. Since then there has been a huge void in my life. Mom had been ill, but not in any immediate danger, so her passing was sudden and shocking. This is my first experience of losing someone so close to me. The concepts of life, death, and afterlife are forward in my mind.

This painting helped me cope. The daily labor of completing each white rectangle, over and over, like a chant to the Infinite, gave me structure and purpose as I waded through the grief and loss. It's my most minimal piece yet.  The underpainting was lively violet, green, brown, and dark gray -- all that is left now is the white, with a hint of violet showing through in the lines that form the grid. Like snow, the purity of white symbolizes the intermediary between the spirit world and the human reality. White is silent and gentle, like snow falling; like arcane knowledge being transmitted through the ether, divine energy flows to us from a higher spiritual plane.

Red Bird

Red Bird, oil on canvas, 18 x 18 inches, © 2011 Diane McGregor

Red Bird

Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,
those dun-colored darlings,
so hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds.
I know He has many children,
not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason --
perhaps because the winter is so long
and the sky so black-blue,

or perhaps because the heart narrows
as often as it opens --
I am grateful

that red bird comes all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else can do.


~ Mary Oliver ~

Lynette Haggard's Artist Interview Series

I was recently featured on Lynette Haggard's Art Blog. Please enjoy reading this interview with me about my work and inspiration. I talk a lot about what led me to becoming a painter, and share some of my working methods and some of the inner processes that motivate me toward creating my work.

Thank you so much, Lynette!

Winter Poems

Clockwise from upper left: Winter Poem I, Winter Poem II, Winter Poem III, Winter Poem IV

All oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches, © 2011 Diane McGregor

Winter is returning to New Mexico. Very cold mornings, a little snow, the blacks, browns, and golds of the frozen plants and leaves. This quartet of paintings was composed as a poem to the winter season, the winter landscape.

Instead of the vertical orientation of the grid's rectangles, the new paintings I have been working on emphasize the horizontal -- in other words, the horizon line of the vast New Mexico landscape. The blues and whites echo the frozen earth and sky, with flecks of gold, black and brown reminding the viewer of the warmth that still lingers beneath the surface.

I will be shipping these paintings out soon for a group exhibition in December at Costello-Childs Contemporary in Scottsdale. The exhibition will feature smaller works by the gallery's artists. There will be an opening reception on Wednesday, December 7th, from 4 to 8pm.