Diane Carr employs a potent combination of loose, impressionistic brushwork and heightened color to portray the lacebark pine tree (Pinus bungeana). The painting’s vantage point is pitched slightly upward from just above the base of the tree’s multinecked trunk, and from this view, the branches above stretch outward in a flurry of movement. Carr, who takes obvious pleasure in exploring the properties of wet oil paint, allows her strokes to accumulate and mix together. In working this way, she lets areas of the canvas dissolve into heavy layers of painted imagery, and the piece torques almost into abstraction. As in her past work, she moves away from conventional color choices, choosing tones of vibrant peach and dark purple to convey the spectral quality of the forest. The resulting image is charged with a palpable intensity and emotional energy. This approach provides a marked contrast to Joan Backes’s close-range rendering of the lacebark pine, and together the two works create a rich, comprehensive view of the tree.

Diane Carr exhibited her work in Twilight, a solo exhibition at SPACES, Cleveland, OH, and Out of This World, a two-person exhibition at PS122 Gallery with fellow Arbores Venerabiles artist Amy Talluto, New York, NY. She has exhibited in groups shows such as Into the Woods, Arsenal Gallery, Central Park, New York, NY; Flight of the Mechanical Bumblebee, AHL Foundation, New York, NY; The Pursuit of Happiness, Sarah Bowen Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Emergent Behavior, Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA; Peace King Mother Nature, Second Gallery, Boston, MA; and Another Place, Nurture Art, Brooklyn, NY. She has received several awards, including a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Arts Fund grant, an Artists Space Independent Project grant, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA grant. She earned her BA from American University and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts.

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