As a visual artist, Diana Rosa takes inspirations from an alternative upbringing where she closely connected with the natural landscape around her. Born and raised in Cuba shaped her perspective on nature and how humans interact with land, animals and each other. She employed a  Folk-Art style to explore questions of identity, love, relationship and environment in our society. Her paintings often have strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. She makes personal women’s experiences serious subjects for art. Her paintings transcend boundaries by their powerful and intimate narratives and the intense emotional content. She is greatly influenced by the modern masters from Cezanne, Henri Matisse to Frida Kahlo.

Diana Rosa’s unique artworks combine keen observation with a free and honest style of painting. Uninhibited by technical draughtsmanship, her works has a visual ‘pop’ through his bold use of colour, and flat layering. Diana’s work has been described as naïve or an outsider.  The artists derive everything from their own depths, and not from the conventions of classical or fashionable art.   She portraits stories in which the character and circumstances of the artist makes the art richer with the accompanying narrative. Her simplistic style of painting can often mean that the hidden complexities in her work - including her powers of observation, her humorous reflections on society, and her deeper references to art history - can be inadvertently overlooked.

Diana is most well-known for her observational paintings of contorted, and flat figures, in and exuberant coloured environment. Although, the most significant is the simplicity, expressiveness and more instinctive nature.  Steering clear of traditional painting techniques and instead allowing her imagination and instincts to guide her hand.  Diana’s spontaneous approach naturally simplifies the subject of her paintings, breaking down scenes to more abstract interpretations that have a charming innocence to their observation.

However, while Diana Rosa’s paintings may simplify a scene, they are far from simple paintings. Her bold colour palette and the wild gestural energy of her brushstrokes echo the disharmony of the mass, and strife of the real world.In contrast to this, her simplified painting style reflects the trivial, the banal, and the everyday nature of her observations. There is a strong sense of story telling in the paintings, though Diana gives us just enough detail to start the story, leaving the viewers to fill in the details and encouraging creative interpretations of each scene.

Education

Bachelor of Art in Art History, Fine Art, Oriente University. Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. 1994

Distinctions

2019

• Toronto Outdoor Art Fair: "Loved" by Tiffany Pratt

2018

• Toronto Outdoor Art Fair: "Loved" by Tiffany Pratt
• Toronto Outdoor Art Fair: Named one of Ten best artists of Toronto by Now Magazine

2017

• Rise Art prize: Shortlisted artist. London. U.K.