Diana Folsom: The Materials of the Universe - Connecting Earth and Sky

Diana Folsom in the Gallery

By Hollis Goodall, Curator of Japanese Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art • September 5, 2012

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. William Bryant Logan, in Dirt 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.

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 this “is not a world of isolated things but of processes in concert.” From this inspiration, Ms. Folsom begins her work.