ARLENE DIEHL - STATEMENT

“My work has evolved from a lifelong love for, fascination with, and sense of reverence for the human form. I have also been deeply committed over the years to the process of drawing, finding in it time and again an emotional and visceral immediacy that has served my deeper purposes.

I am working now exclusively with live models and with a great deal of speed. I like working with a living, breathing human being because, by definition, the subject is not a static one but a dynamic one, moment by moment in a process of change. My aim is to transmit something of the power of that dynamism to the viewer. When successful, I liken the experience to going on a somewhat frightening roller coaster ride and arriving breathless and sometimes amazed at where that ride has taken me. The process requires of me a very deep letting off of the brakes of any preconceived notions I may have had for the drawing. By responding freshly to a particular moment the work can move in many different directions, sometimes more abstractly, sometimes more representationally. My best work often includes elements of both, and can be further layered with a sense of transition, emotional nuance and some measure of mystery.”

BIOGRAPHY

Arlene was recognized early for her work. At sixteen, she received the prestigious Strathmore Award in Drawing, awarded annually to one high school student nationwide. At seventeen, her self-portrait was chosen for the cover of Senior Scholastic Magazine and that year her work was also favorably noted in New York Magazine. She studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, exhibited in Boston and Cape Cod, and worked professionally as a portraitist prior to her move to San Francisco in 1990.

Arlene has recently exhibited her work at ARTworkSF Gallery, February 2008 in San Francisco, at the Long Beach Museum of Fine Art in September, 2007 and at Expressions Gallery in Berkeley, Ca., in April 2007 and in September of 2006. She also had a June 2006 solo show “Figuration: Nineteen Drawings and One Bronze” at Anderson Smith North in San Rafael, Ca., and was included in a three person show “Gestures In and On Paper: Original Works by Arlene Diehl, David Einstein and Minjung Kim” at Modern Masters Fine Art in Palm Desert, Ca. in May 2006. She has been invited to participate in the Florence Biennale in December of 2009.

Arlene’s work is Included in private collections across the United States and Canada as well as in Great Britain, France, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Australia, Taiwan, Mexico and Brazil.