Statement
"Modern science, metaphysics, and ancient ideas of guiding forces in the universe inspire Diana Folsom’s painting. Materials draw her—the unifying elements that compose stars, planets, and human beings—and by their universal processes, linking these various elements through the media and the subject matter of her art.
In her “StarFlower” series, Ms. Folsom paints images of stars—gastric cataclysms of new stars forming or old stars dying—which in deep space take on forms reminiscent of flowers as they explode or implode, emitting gaseous petals of interstellar dust. Here, Ms. Folsom draws parallels between the cosmic and the terrestrial. In a companion series, “DirtVortex”, Ms. Folsom employs soil of significant origin. On top of the soil, she drizzles various tones of resin-bound pigment that complement the original color of the soil in spiraling lines that draw one’s eye to the painting’s core. In “Dirt,” William Bryant Logan says, “All that is living burns.” Life forms burn carbon for energy, plants absorb heat through photosynthesis, and stars generate heat that creates life-giving light. Whether in a clover or a space field, flowers and stars punctuate their surroundings with brilliant, saturated color and light, sharing their life cycles of growth, blossoming, withering, and death, then recombining to create new life. These deep connections form the impetus for Ms. Folsom’s painting.
Similarly, in her “Woman as River” series, Ms. Folsom penetrates and combines the female body’s internal workings and external appearance, finding its terrestrial parallel in rivers seen from high in the atmosphere. The form these rivers take is feminine in shape, and like the rivers themselves, the female body flows with life and erodes with time. Connecting these series of “StarFlower,” “DirtVortex,” and “Woman as River” is the idea that all forms in the universe stem from the same substances, and all have a life cycle of years, epochs, or eons.
Ms. Folsom paints with materials of special meaning, selecting soils from places of family, cultural or historical significance, or personal memory to mix into her layered pigments and resins. Working with brushes, steering the pigments as they flow across the painting surface, and sometimes terraforming with her hands, Folsom layers and manipulates the materials to express the idea of a natural process. Her technique and imagery place Ms. Folsom within the California Flow Painting genre, as Peter Frank defined it. Again, William Bryant Logan in “Dirt” states that this “is not a world of isolated things but of processes in concert.” From this inspiration, Ms. Folsom begins her work.
– Hollis Goodall, Curator of Japanese Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010
Diana Folsom was born and raised in California and is an enrolled Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma member. She comes from quiet, hard-working people. Her father’s family was part of the Choctaw’s third migration from Oklahoma to California, and her mother’s family moved from West Texas to California. She grew up in San Diego, went to graduate school in NYC, lived and worked in Los Angeles, California, and recently moved to Oklahoma. She earned a BA in Art from San Diego State University and an MA in Creative Art - Painting from Hunter College, City University of New York. In addition to her artistic endeavors, she was on staff at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for 22 years and is now at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
As a regularly exhibiting artist, highlights of her activities include Woman as River: Liquid Passages at DoubleVision Gallery, Los Angeles; As Dreams Are Made On - A Tribute to William Shakespeare with husband William F. Matthews at Lois Lambert Gallery, Bergamot Station, Los Angeles; and Art from the Ashes group exhibitions for the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens and Deukmejian Park, in Glendale, CA; artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center; a one-person exhibition at Gallery Zein Xeno in Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Folsom has been associated with Korean artists through exhibitions at Gallery Western in Los Angeles and participation in the Third International NamSong Invitational Art Show at Seongnam Arts Center in Gyeonggi-do, Korea. She shares a kindred spirit with Korean artists who show a strong connection with nature and a boundless enthusiasm for the arts.
Since moving to Oklahoma, Folsom has been exploring her family heritage by studying the collections at the Gilcrease Museum and membership in the Southeast Indian Artist Association (SEIAA). As her new paintings evolve, iconography found in ancient southeastern pottery and ancient star maps are folded into layers of fluid color to continue her painting methods.