Diana Kosei Hartel

Biography

The intention of my work is direct seeing whether representational or abstract, painted en plein aire or in the studio.  It is my aim to paint what matters. I draw from experiential, perceptual, and emotional themes that include and go beyond phenomena. I trace my painting lineage from Pacific Northwest and Canadian landscape painters to lyrical abstract expressionists. In 1993, while working in environmental sciences and epidemiology, I founded a non-profit for urban arts, eco-restoration, and nutrition called Planet Hot Plate of Bronx Community Works. In 1999, a passion for painting emerged over the course of over three years of residential training at Zen Mountain Monastery in the Catskills. The monastery provided a unique Zen-based arts education through a wide range of arts, environment, and spiritual practice intensives. After monastery residence, I founded Madrona Arts, an arts and ecology nonprofit in Oregon. It is no longer a 501C3 and now hosts Madrona Arts Press. At the same time, I engaged a self-directed investigation of painting. I was mentored by successive teachers and studied at the Woodstock School of Art (Art Students League). All the elements of my life merge in art.
Watershed Redemption