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Verily, 2024, acrylic paint on paper, 23 x 21”
Work by: Diane Ayott, John Franklin, Jenny Kemp, Ellie Kreischer and Nancy Simonds.
Promise Me, 2022, acrylic paint on paper, 14 x 11”
Work by: Diane Ayott, Susan Dory, Harriette Joffe, Erick Johnson, Jenny Kemp, Hideyo Okamura, Dana Piazza, Noah Post, Nancy Simonds, Audrey Stone and Kit Warren.
Springette, 2022, acrylic paint on paper, 15 x 14.75”
Bernay Fine Art is pleased to present our 5th Annual Lines and Colors show. This is an exciting show in which we feature the work of gallery artists that work in abstraction. This year we will feature the work of Diane Ayott, Hideyo Okamura, Dana Piazza and Audrey Stone. We are excited to also include work from Susan Dory and Warren Isensee.
Link to exhibition catalog
For Orlando, 2017, mixed media on paper, 30 x 22"
Matthew Swift Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of 22 paintings and sculptures chosen for the centrality of color in the work. The exhibition’s title reflects the fact that many of the titles of individual works refer explicitly to colors within them. Other titles refer indirectly to colors, and still others lack explicit titles but repay explicit attention to the dimension of color, whether bold or subtle.
This exhibition features work by Peter Lyons, Zygmund Jankowski, Diane Ayott, Gabrielle Barzaghi, Susan Erony, Timothy Harney, Ruth Mordecai, Ed Touchette, and Aron Leaman, and the Gallery is very pleased to introduced ceramic sculptures by Gloucester artist Andy Matlow.
Kleine Kreise, 2021, acrylic on panel, 12 x 12"
Bernay Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of our Winter Group Show. The show will run from January 14th through the end of February.
The gallery’s winter exhibition will feature the work of many of our talented permanent artists including Diane Ayott, Warner Friedman, Phil Knoll, Tony Luciani, Sue Muskat, Shira Toren and Michael Zelehoski. We are also please to welcome Michael Filmus to the show.
Slurpy, 2017, acrylic on panel, 30 x 30"
Matthew Swift Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of outstanding abstract works of art selected to illustrate and explore the variety of ways artists discover and pursue an impulse toward abstraction in their practice. The exhibition’s title is an abstraction of the title of the 1994 book Driven to Distraction by Drs. Edward Hallowell and John Ratey.
Capacity for Solitude, 2021, mixed media on paper, 29 x 23”
Bernay Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of the Works On Paper show on September 24th at 296 Main Street in Great Barrington, MA . The show will run through October 24th, 2021.
The gallery’s new exhibition will promote contemporary artists in mediums of painting and drawing. Works by 8 artists will be featured in the show. They are: Diane Ayott, Mike Glier, Sandy Litchfield, Sue Muskat, Joe Neill, Dana Piazza, Joy Taylor and Barbara Takenaga. In addition, we are excited to show the work of Nancy Simonds.
Liebe Gunilla, 2020, mixed media on two panels, 24 x 48"
Work by: Diane Ayott, Midge Battelle, Barbara E. Cohen, Anne Corrsin, Phyllis Ewen, Kathi Robinson Frank, Nancy Rubens, Judith Trepp
Link to exhibition information
SHE, 2020, mixed media on panel, 30 x 30"
Bernay Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of a new show entitled “Unfinished Business: A Women’s Show”. This show is named to highlight the status of the ERA.
The “Unfinished Business” show includes the work of eight women artists. Stephanie Anderson displays her expert drawing skills in her new graphite on clayboard piece, “Clique”. Diane Ayott uses spatial relationships and vibrant colors in contemporary patterned paintings. Roselle Chartock contributes mixed media collages that showcase women’s figures. Chenta Laury, a textile artist from Hawaii, uses bark cloth, raw wool, silk and bamboo to create three magnificent unique pieces. Hyper-realistic painter Nadine Robbins contributes two striking portraits of women. Dee Shapiro and Sonya Sklaroff have both produced works inspired by Covid-19. Dee presents colorful mixed media pieces on panel while Sonya, working from her apartment in NYC, has painted several brilliant COVID-19 themed paintings. Amelia Toelke’s sculpture “Home Sweet Home” is now on display on the front lawn of Bernay Fine Art. The golden sculpture reminds us all of the time we have spent at home during COVID-19. In addition, Amelia has painted several gold-plated pieces for the show.
Red, Yellow, Blue, 2020, acrylic on three papers, 12 x 27.25”
Bernay Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of a new show entitled “Winter Exhibition” on January 18, 2019 at 325 Stockbridge Road in Great Barrington, MA.
The gallery’s new exhibition will promote contemporary artists from the United States and Europe in mediums of painting and works on paper. New works by three artists will be featured in the show including Diane Ayott, Phil Knoll and Joe Neill.
This award-winning group of artists has been carefully curated to reflect a different range of forms and dynamic styles. Diane Ayott is a contemporary, modernist painter who uses paint and various collage materials to explore patterns and repetition which create serene, dream-like pieces. Phil Knoll is a figurative realistic painter who creates magnificent grids and large paintings of animals and other subjects using graphite and watercolor. Joe Neill is a contemporary artist who is fascinated by how things are put together; what materials and methods are used to keep these structures intact. Neill’s drawings have an internal geometric logic and are dense but open so the viewer can enter in while being forced to remain outside.
Love In December, 2015, mixed media on panel, 38 x 38"
Wordsworth famously described poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” resulting from emotions “recollected in tranquility,” a process in which feelings are crucially modified and directed by thoughtful intentions, “organic sensibility,” and the discipline of craft — that is, a process of shaping and polishing, which Horace before him called limae labor et mora, the patient toil of the file.
The disciplined excellence of Ayott’s art is thrillingly accessible on these terms. Her intuitive and personal journaling process both provides a suggestive title and at a deeper level embeds emotion into her art, which we experience with immediacy because the language of abstraction is free of alienating specificity: Promise, Proof Enough, Come Spring— the suggestive power of these titles extends undiminished, because unqualified, into our personal geometries.
At the art surface, Ayott’s devoted study of aesthetic history and principles, and her months and years of meditative studio practice, applying the many tools of her mark making — brushes, boxtops, and rollers, if not files — give an authority, a complexity, and a rationality to her constructions, which allow them to become containers of emotion, encodings of the fragile data of shared experience.
Ayott’s paintings are beautiful, universal, and still personal, sharing “passions,” as Wordsworth prescribed for poems, “with an overbalance of pleasure.”
- Mathew Swift (Gallery Director)
Link to exhibition catalog
Applause, 2014, mixed media on paper, 20 x 20"
Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to present Jeepers Creepers, a solo exhibition featuring new paintings and works on paper by Diane Ayott.
Beautiful Voice August, 2013, acrylic paint on paper, 7.25 x 7"
Paperwork is a group exhibition at the Warm Springs Gallery in Charlottesville, VA. The exhibition consists of works on paper by six women artists that emphasize pattern, accretion, stacking and repeating rhythms that create fields of organized space. The work uses pattern and rhythm to signify connections between people and the repetition of daily life.
Link to exhibition catalog
Currency, 2013, mixed media on two panels, 40 x 80.5"
The artists selected for this exhibition use color as the subject or subtext of their work, each exploring color tactilely, symbolically to define space as well as physical presence, or formally to create the illusion of space. From a variety of media and artistic practices, viewers are provided multiple entry points to consider artists’ choices. Exhibiting artists include: Diane Ayott, Carlos Jiménez Cahua, Catherine Evans, Masako Kamiya, Catherine Kehoe, Keira Kotler, Paul McMullan, Laura Moriarty, Lynn Richardson, Victor Schrager, Nancy Murphy Spicer, Matt Rich, and Bill Thompson.
- Kristina Durocher, Museum Director
Link to Art New England review
Click to enlarge
Above and Below brings together a diverse group of artists whose vision is at once uniquely personal, political and spiritual, and at times captures the child experience with a mature and introspective vision. The exhibition incorporates a range of mediums including film, installation, painting and encaustic sculpture.
Wild Party, 2008, mixed media on paper, 14 x 11"
An exhibit of Collage and Assemblage from the Collection of the US State Department Art Bank Gallery, 2011, Washington, DC
Link to Salem News article
Link to Beverly Citizen article
Floater, 2008, acrylic paint on panel, 12 x 12”
“Ayott's exceptional skill as a colorist is evident in the gorgeous painting Floater; the dazzling peacock blue and orange creates a jewel-like opulence reminiscent of the geometric abstractions of Gustav Klimt.”
— Susan Mulski
Link to art New England review
Link to exhibition information
Lost Again, 2009, mixed media on paper, 22.25 x 15"
“Ayott’s lines and marks come into focus as we near and the penmanship takes on a precision. But Ayott’s precision avoids rigidity and is often a loosely applied geometry as evidenced in her method of patterning. There is a sense that the work is both a study and a doodle, serious and curious; a habit that enjoys fleshing out the meaning by writing it out over and over again. As viewers we read the results, the surface, the play of line, color and the again and again.”
— Kathryn Markel
Link to press release
Outcome, 2007, oil paint on panel, 40 x 38"
“Diane Ayott uses marks and stamps in patterns over the entire picture plane to create eccentric, slightly skewed compositions that radiate a fierce energy. Layers of riotous color form what she says is an “accumulation of thought” and create strong spatial depth. Because the marks she makes are so thick, they create a physicality that further enhances the sense of being lost in color space. The meditative, sensual pleasure Ayott has in making these is palpable.”
— Kathryn Markel
Link to press release
Surviving Act, 2005, oil and pencil on paper, 9 x 7”
“We are held not only by the perfection of surface, but also by the sheer ability of these paintings to speak. In much the same way that a child will become delighted with one sound, Ayott can fall in love with a single shape, which she then repeats with various levels of intensity... Ayott is capable of telling a number of stories that involve careful looking, each of which can be privately embraced and then retold by the viewer.”
—Katherine French
Director, Danforth Museum
Click to view catalog
Installation view
"Diane Ayott uses abstraction to dissect the English language. Layers of oil paint reflect the strata of meaning in a word or the complexity of a human life. She delves deep into the canvas to illustrate her personal definitions with each piece. The bright colors and sense of movement in Defining Surface offer a terrific energy boost in addition to the artist's metaphoric expressions...
The paintings layer dots upon dots; seeing through these transparent forms the viewer slowly notices new motifs. Moment to Moment presents orderly superficial grids and translucent spots with ovals skillfully placed underneath. As the viewer starts to make sense of the first image, another emerges in our peripheral vision, but with a darting glance it disappears. It may happen several times while viewing the same painting, but the mind refuses to stop trying to grab hold of that elusive illusion."
—Kristen I. Pounds
Art New England, Feb/March 2006
Concord Art Association, Concord, MA
Jane Deering Gallery, Gloucester, MA
"Her abstract paintings are highly expressive and emotionally charged, using colors, which call forth a sensation of memory. Their complex and layered structure conveys subtle shifts of information in a way that is both striking and delicate."
— Katherine French
Director, Danforth Museum
Exhibition Curator
