the artist
A bit of an instigator, Diya is most centered with a brush in hand, working out her thoughts in color. She is determined to live authentically in community. Her favorite activity is to sip a hot cup of tea while in a deep enriching conversation.
Diya is a trained Mental Health Counselor and Art Therapist living in the Greater Boston Area. She received her MA from Lesley University and her BA in Psychology and Studio Art from Franklin and Marshall College. In her many lives, she’s worked with people of all ages at varying levels of functioning and hopes to continue. She is currently working as an artist, teacher, freelance art installer and community art organizer.
Diya’s hope is to create a safe and enriching environment where people, whatever their age, are able to connect with their spirit and leave feeling centered and able. She uses art as a way to encourage the development of creativity and imagination. She believes these to be vital skills for the future workforce, along with their ability to collaborate. Her hope of building a creative community is in part to address the growing concerns around modern loneliness. She hopes for the arts to create these emotional bridges.
The workshops Diya offers focuses on developing artistic skills, while developing resilience and self-assuredness. When this becomes the foundation for self - expression, it affords the artist a way to focus on their own well-being.
What does conscious living look like for you? Diya is open to collaborations, and is curious to ask her community what they need.
Please email for sales or replication of any art work.
Commissions available upon request.
Recent Exhibit:
For a painter, sitting in isolation, the portrait becomes a way to reflect on the process of learning the craft. Painting from observation, allows the stillness to be captured long enough to recognize the familiarity of the mark.
How well do we want to be seen? How literal does the framework need to be?
Will we be seen for ourselves?
What is this narcissistic need?
Token, the most recent creation at Dis-plant, used the same techniques of traditional materials like oil and acrylic, to experiment with generally accessible, discarded materials with short shelf-lives, make-up. Specifically, iridescent lotion, eye shadows and pencils, nail polish and sample foundations; all selected by others. The portrait has become a reminder of the ways in which covering up has been a way for me to reach toxic levels of generational assimilation.
For me more than you, these pieces are a reflection of a process of healing. The structures we are born into are often out of our control. What we do with the choices is what makes us who we are. Life is a reflection of what we put into it. Where there was unkindness, I learned the acts that brought me joy. But the circular process forced me to first unlearn the disharmony. The seemingly benign flowers, seduced by light, gave me a way to transmute the daily battering of dissonant spaces. Anger, discontent, disease fueling change and more importantly release.
Thank you for listening to me.
