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SHADE
MAGAZINE “Resurrected
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In a barren landscape with leafless trees lays a severed and tattooed bald head, eyes looking upward as if still hanging on to life. An umbilical-shaped cord meanders from its neck, ending at a bloody, severed arm—also tattooed with strange, symbols reminiscent of Medieval text. A deep red flowing banner above the scene reads “Glorious Mysteries”—and, indeed, the works of Daniel Martin Diaz are mysterious and glorious in their ability to unnerve and compel. Steeped in the mournful angst of early post-colonial South American painting, Diaz’s paintings betray their contemporary origins. Using a limited palette of sepia, black, and deep red colors, Diaz creates paintings that resonate with a spiritual power, which emanates from carefully placed Latin symbols, religious figures and alchemical symbology. Employing an Old Masters technique of egg-tempera and resin-oil painting, he underscores his fascination with Russian icons and Mexican retablos, and the theatricality inherent in them that has inspired countless followers of the Catholic religion. Recalling how death and religion played important roles in his Mexican-born family’s life, Diaz depicts scenes and compositions that evoke mystery, fear, and irony. While his family’s beliefs seem to exude from his subconscious, they elicit questions that remain unanswered. For Diaz, his paintings do not attempt to teach or explain, but flow out of him from a dark part of his psyche, perpetuating even more mystery. Diaz, born in 1967 in Tucson, Arizona, did not set out to be an artist. He actually began as a musician, a passion that he continues to indulge. Diaz spent two years at Yavapai College and two years at Northern Arizona University studying music composition before he returned to Tucson. He now creates music with his wife Paula in the duo “Blind Divine,” whose dark, ambient music provided the soundtrack for the movie “Orphans and Angels” produced by New Zealander Harold Brodie. While music always engaged Diaz, visual art became increasingly alluring to him. Dabbling in painting in his spare time, he created an image of the Virgin Mary. This painting was an epiphany for Diaz—he realized that becoming an artist was what he wanted to do in life and that religious subject matter was what he wanted to paint. Always fascinated with the dark side of life and religion (admitting a certain obsession about “looking in places you shouldn’t be looking”), he began to make paintings that were loaded with a sense of drama, terror, darkness and passion—forbidden images and themes. At
first Diaz was conflicted about these works, but his initial feelings
of guilt were soon assuaged by the critical acclaim that he received.
In 1998 he was given a solo exhibition at the Tucson Museum of Art and
was included in a group exhibition at Etherton Gallery in Tucson. Soon
his dark, sepia-toned compositions—ranging from depictions of the
Virgin hanging on a meat hook to a winged Christ with an elongated,
deformed arm—made their way into the public eye. Included in the
many places that exhibited his art were religious institutions, that
embraced his archetypal images and their Mexican folk origins. Such
places as the Biblical Arts Museum in Dallas and the Cathedral Basilica
of the Assumption, the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, and the
Museum and Academy of the Visionary Arts have included in him exhibitions
about art and religion. When Diaz embarks on a painting, he first sketches a drawing and assembles a cache of symbols, letters and images. The images, however, are not as important to the artist as is the emotional content of the compositions he creates. Both symbols and images become metaphors for larger issues and concepts. To Diaz a dislocated arm might mean the loss of faith or the depiction of three arms or three eyes could stand for the Trinity. His messages sometimes emerge as he works, but they are never preplanned or definitive. He prefers that the reaction be different for each viewer and that the message be vague to imply multiple meanings. What is intentional, however, is that the artist wants people to reflect on their own spirituality when viewing his paintings. His curious symbols, brooding colors, and fantastic figures, also make one ponder the history and stories of religion, eliciting a range of emotions from horror to ecstasy. Curious symbols and myriad metaphors abound in Faith’s Resurrection, for example. A mournful, deformed figure in a loincloth stands crowned and isolated in the amber glow of a stage setting. This forlorn figure’s arms are severed and bleeding—clumsily reattached to his body by a wooden pole impaled through his body. A wound at his bloody throat reveals a cord that tethers a similarly tortured floating head. Severed hands reach out from thin air as if pleading for something—perhaps redemption? Such morbidly theatrical compositions abound in Diaz’s oeuvre, yet the answers to the questions posed in his dark, emotional paintings are not the point. The richness and mystery of religion past and present instead form fascinating narratives. While Diaz’s paintings may be dark and terrifying, his career is soaring to the light. Last year he exhibited with the noted photographer Joel Peter Witkin at Etherton Gallery in Tucson and this year he was invited to participate in an exhibition at Castle Kuenburg, in Payerbach, Austria. Another important exhibition in which he is participating is “Homage to Father Kino,” on tour to Italy, Mexico and the United States. Recently he was included in a milagros exhibition at CPOP, a gallery in Detroit, Michigan, and an exhibition at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He is also included in Chicana and Chicano Art Book, newly published by Arizona State University. Aside from the inclusion in such exhibitions and the attention he has received from Flux Europa magazine and a growing audience, Diaz is most proud of the commission he just completed for San Antonio de Padua Catholic Church in San Carlos, Mexico. Two 8’x 4’ paintings of St. Gabrielis and St. Michael now adorn a beautiful new church built by a generous restaurant owner from Tucson for this impoverished area. Through his art, Diaz reaches out to the faithful through paintings that hark to times past, and captivates both old and young with stirring, unnerving imagery blending pathos and the surreal.
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