A Wisconsin native, Mary Diman has an MFA and a BS in painting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Art. She teaches oil and acrylic painting for UW Outreach in Madison, Rhinelander School of the Arts,  and at Green Lake workshops. She has exhibited extensively in Wisconsin and nationally. She also works as a scientific illustrator for UW-Madison.

Title: El Sueño (The Dream)
Medium: acrylic on a violin

Masks and the costumed figure are of interest to me as subject matter because they create/imply a co-existing other world and can create a shift in our perception of reality, even if only briefly. Its one of the reasons I'm a realist (rather than abstract) painter. I love illusion and multi-layered narrative moments.

I've been strongly influenced by the Autopoloroids of Lucas Samaras and the work of Donald Roller Wilson. They made me aware that a painting which is small can be concentrated, dense, powerful, and mysterious. I had previously only understood this concept relative to sacred objects.

Many of my earlier paintings are meant to be small hand-held objects, and with this violin I wanted to take a hand-held object and make a painting, a wall piece that could also be hand-held, a mask. This figure is in an almost-awake state where dreams merge with reality, a creative place.

It was important to me that this violin hang flat on the wall. I de-constructed the violin leaving behind what made it seem most like a stretched canvas. I would hope that on initially seeing it the viewer would not be aware that it's a violin at all, but it is: only the soundboard is a substitution.