Diana Ingalls Leyba

 “My paintings come "off the wall" through a build up of layers and construction on the paint surface and I’ve begun to think of them as tapestries of paint. Surface texture and depth is achieved through a layering of many different materials and transparencies with a constant of paint, paper, colored pencils, threads, and beads. Images and symbols come from the everyday, from different cultures, and from within. I am a literal person and pick imagery that evokes the universal in the personal or the sacred in the commonplace. The models that pose for me stand in as symbols for ideas and feelings. Juxtaposing images, whether people or animals or objects, set up a dialogue to be interpreted by the viewer.     A tapestry of interwoven brush strokes, layers of paper, paint, and thread have meaning or reason marking time in ritual form. I respond to one color coming through another, as well as, one image coming through another so that one’s mind has to sort its perceptions. I enjoy the complexity of the surface.  The act of painting becomes ritual as the layers build to create the end result. Work as a stream of consciousness...work as spirituality...work to satisfy an aesthetic...”

Born in Georgetown Guyana, raised in Philadelphia PA, she got her BFA at the Tyler School of Art. She relocated to Silver City, NM in 1996.