Martha Diamond’s approach to painting, and her execution, delight me. I dream of achieving something even approximating her studied generality in my own practice. Her subject matter was New York City architecture. I relish the critic’s observation that Diamond wasn’t concerned with “assiduous documentation of the built environment,” but rather with conveying how it felt to her.

Her small studies — preparatory exercises for the large-scale works that follow — are tightly organized, keyhole views onto the grandeur of the city; most are on Masonite boards around 16 or 20 inches tall.

Here’s the 10-foot-wide painting resulting from “Study for Yellow Sky” (above):

Underestimating Diamond is a trap for careless viewers. Even when her paintings look casual, or simple, she is solving complex problems. Take the large, squat “Highway,” a seemingly straightforward painting that did not particularly grab me on first appraisal. In time, I understood how Diamond had felt her way around this massive white building, reconstructing it section by section in her wobbly, wide strokes. (She notoriously used only her left hand to paint, because, she once explained, “it’s connected to the part of the brain that sees space, volume, and probably colors better.”) It’s the kind of building one takes for granted; Diamond helps us to see it anew.

Diamond reportedly made these “detail” paintings to work out how to handle particularly tricky sections of a larger composition…

(Jonathan Griffin, “In Martha Diamond’s Art, She Took Manhattan,” New York Times, 4-11-24)

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