She said she painted her ‘perceptions.' This is what Martha Diamond meant.

Jorge S. Arango, Portland Press Herald, October 2, 2024

Certainly, it was not for lack of eloquence about her work. In a glass case near the end of the exhibition are her typed responses to questions posed by poet Bill Berkson, who was writing an article for Artforum magazine. “Do you consider your art expressionism?” he queried. Her answer:

"On the surface, literally, my work resembles expressionist paintings: the emphasis on looking at the paint itself, the undisguised brushwork, to obviousness of apparent distortion, little regard for actual local color except as a moot point (and re abstract expressionism) suggestion of grandness and monumental scale or conspicuousness. I’m more concerned with a vision than expressionism and try to paint that vision realistically. I try to paint my perceptions rather than through emotion.”

More on that last statement in a moment.

Diamond, who died Dec. 30, was smart, articulate and even funny (“on the surface, literally”). Frank Rose, in his very personal essay in the exhibition catalog, lists the obvious chauvinism of the art world in the 1970s (and through the remainder of the millennia, really). But he also cites a sense of wonder “that led other people to think of her as naïve.” He points out others: “Grit and determination. (She liked men, but she was very clear that as an artist, she could never be anyone’s wife.) And unlike so many of her peers, a clear indifference to the market … She was an artist, not a careerist.”

The felicitous occasion of this exhibit has largely to do with Alex Katz, a longtime friend and advocate of Diamond’s work, as well as Larry Aldrich, the founder of the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where the show will travel from Nov. 17 through May 18. Katz’s foundation has gifted Diamond paintings to many museums (including Colby), and Aldrich purchased Diamond’s first museum acquisition back in 1972.