Hello,

I am at my desk (day job) getting ready for my class I teach at NYU to begin next week.  By nature I am a night person and that's when I love to paint in the studio.  All my life I have had day jobs, so that is part of it.

When I paint I have no idea of what it will be.  When I was a landscape painter years ago I painted when my husband and I camped out in upstate, NY.  Then I returned to school and had not free time to go away weekends, so my main source of inspiration was our yearly sojourn to Spain.  

Since the mid-1980s I have been an abstract painter, but sill am inspired by the elements in nature.  When I go into the studio I work on impluse, I rework a painting sometimes 5 times before it FEELS RIGHT.  With abstract work it is mainly a feeling based expression.  You know when it's right.  I love abstraction because it enables me to be completely free.  I look at it this way.  In life there are so many rules you need to follow...job, laws, rules, etc.  When I paint I want to be able to call the shots.  If I don't like it I change it and rework it. I make the rules there is no one else to please but myself.  Fortunately, as with most of us, we have collectors and I have been lucky to have a number of them who buy from me yearly as a steady base of clients.  I sell a lot from my desk in the office, too.  

Painting in the form energizes me.  Of course I go through the frustration when it isn't what I want, but I just keep working until it reflects what I feel inside...even if I didn't know what that was when I began....diane (costablance) That's the area in Spain where I have my place.

diane