Diane Ainsworth majored in Fine Art at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Tulsa, then continued her training at the Baum Art School in Pennsylvania. She began as a watercolorist. In 1985 she traveled to Taos, New Mexico for a workshop with plein air painters — her first exposure to oil paint in that specific light — and the switch was decisive. “The colors, texture, and richness of the oils were a wonderful combination to express the vivid hues and glorious light of New Mexico,” she has said. She co-founded the Oklahoma Society of Impressionists and moved to Taos in 1990, where she became active in the Taos Art Association, won awards, and built a teaching practice that continued for decades. She has since lived in Oklahoma, Colorado, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington state, and Taos again — each place contributing to her palette and her sense of what constitutes a painting-worthy subject.
Her years in the Pacific Northwest — specifically Port Townsend, where she taught from a barn studio — introduced a new subject: the harbor. The abstract designs made by boats and their reflections in still water gave her paintings a structural tension that her Southwest landscapes did not require. The subtle greys and cool light of the Northwest contrasted with the warm saturated color of Taos, and both registers are present in her work at JG. She is an impressionist in the strict sense: up close, her canvases are abstract fields of brushstroke and palette knife texture; from across a room, they resolve into harbors, ponds, flower arrangements, light-filled gardens. The shift in reading distance is deliberate and part of her conception of what painting should do.
She has taken this spatial thinking further with her Bi-Fold and Tri-Fold freestanding panels — paintings on multiple canvases, painted on both sides, that wrap the viewer inside the work at panoramic scale. She has been featured in Southwest Art Magazine and represented by galleries across the country including Dana Gallery in Missoula, the Howell Gallery in Oklahoma City, Anne Irwin Fine Art in Atlanta, and JG Art Gallery on Bainbridge Island. She held a solo exhibition, “The Gift of Water,” at the Bainbridge Island gallery in August 2021.
Impressionism comes naturally to me. Up close the canvas is an abstract design rich with texture and color. I try to communicate my reaction to the subject: capturing the light, colors, and mood. I lose myself in the myriad of shapes, colors and light. The most important element is a personal emotional reaction to the subject — this is what makes a painting be a painting because the feelings are expressed and shared with the viewer.
