Biography
There have been many re-inventions of Diana Hartel. My earliest profession was in environmental sciences. Later the 1980s were spent as an epidemiologist in the vortex of AIDS, drug addiction, street and domestic violence, women’s and gay rights that held NYC in thrall at that time. While on the faculty of a medical school, I branched out to start a non-profit that created eco-restoration projects and a nutrition program called Planet Hot Plate. This was a free-wheeling, hands-on weekly cooking event with poetry, music, stories and eating-cooking advice in transitional housing and street outreach sites throughout the city. Hot Plate was followed in 1999 with over three years of monastery-based training at Zen Mountain Monastery in the Catskills. My job as retreat coordinator allowed a great deal of personal contact with a wide range of teachers and artists. It was inspiring and life changing.
After monastery training, I began a self-directed investigation of my own art process. My work is painted direct in varied wild places in all seasons and conditions including winter nights. At times it is a wild dance with brush partnered to branch, other times stop-motion, calm, then flooded with song. What is it to express the land, the river, moon, rocks, my life, yours, the time it takes a bird to circle overhead? What is at the center of the storm, beyond its edges? Fearless painting without fixed ideas is an endless exploration.
Through this work may we connect to one another, to all living beings, the earth and beyond.