I make art by following an inner compass I don't fully understand and have learned to trust completely. It might lead me through the back alley cobblestone streets of Rome, pausing at a hidden courtyard where centuries of wear have turned a wall into something alive, or standing mesmerized at the edge of Lake Como where the light on water does things that can't be planned. Or it might lead me to the headlands of Point Reyes on the California coast, where the sun breaks through the fog and shorebirds rise in unison, or deep into the rainforests of Costa Rica and Thailand, where life moves through the canopy where I go with a sense of awe and anticipation, because there is always something just ahead that waits beyond the bend. I bring it all back: the photographs, the sketches, the fragments collected along the way, the colors still vivid in my mind. In the studio, everything finds its way into the work.

I follow what calls. What I find has almost always been waiting for me. Serendipity.

What connects all of this, the wandering, the collecting, the making, is something that has been slowly revealing itself: that beauty is not a luxury but a biological need. That the natural world, ancient cultures, personal histories, and the patina of time all speak to something essential in us, something older than memory and deeper than preference. This is what biophilic art reaches for, not the representation of nature, but the experience of it. Not decoration, but resonance. Everything I make, whether it begins in a Roman courtyard, a California headland, or in front of a blank canvas, is an attempt to bring that resonance into the spaces and lives it will inhabit.

Learn more about my biophilic art practice and the science behind it. → Biophilic Art & Design

Over three decades, that instinct has deepened and expanded into three distinct bodies of work, each growing naturally from the one before.

Fresco Photography

This is where it began. I coined the term in 2004 for a technique developed through twenty years of living in Rome: layering original photography of monuments, statues, and architectural details with the textural patinas of the places they inhabit, the worn stone, the quality of light on an ancient wall, the marks left by centuries of human presence. Built through multiple translucent layers, the result is atmospheric and often muted, with a depth that feels historic and contemplative. Something revealed rather than made.

Fresco Dreamscapes

These works do not depict a place. They construct one. Drawn from a lifetime of collecting, elements from my own paintings and photographs, sculptures, figures, and architectural fragments are gathered and composed into entirely new imaginary worlds, where the human figure moves through light and atmosphere that feel both ancient and entirely of the moment. Poetic, suspended, alive with feeling. Compared at gallery showings to the work of Chagall.

Mixed-Media Collages

My most recent and most physically immediate work. Often incorporating printed elements alongside paint in colors I dream about, ancient golds, the gray of dusk on Roman stone, a teal that holds the whole Mediterranean in it, a yellow so transparent it is almost just light, and a reddish orange so warm and vivid it draws you in the way a sunset does. Sometimes I wake with a color so vivid I go straight to the studio to squeeze it onto the canvas. Handmade papers, botanical forms, found natural elements, and at their most personal, fragments of text, fabrics, and keepsakes. It doesn’t matter where I begin because there will be so many layers. I might write a love note or song that parts of it get covered over, leaving just a trace. A tree becomes a female figure. More elements appear. Fragments of a conversation, an old pin from a silk case offered by a stranger at I met by chance, a piece of handmade paper that has been waiting for exactly this moment. More three-dimensional, often richer in color, and more openly hand-made than anything that came before. Every decision is visible, brave, unguarded, and built to be entered like crossing a threshold into the artist’s and viewer’s interior universe.

All three bodies of work share the same origin: a practice of deep looking, built in Rome and carried forward into the landscapes and light of California. Since returning in 2016 I have expanded the work to include the living world of the Bay Area and beyond, gathering new material in the field and bringing it back to the studio.

When I am making, I am excavating, moving freely between photography, paint, and collage the way a child moves through a wonderland, following what calls rather than what is planned. Hidden things surface: love notes, symbols, songs, colors, and forms that become messages I didn’t know I was carrying.

Over the years I have been commissioned to create large-scale art installations for hospitality, healthcare, universities, corporate environments, and residential properties. My work has been featured in gallery exhibitions around the world and hangs in many distinguished private collections. It is currently on view at Gerald Bland Inc., New York, and available to view in person or virtually at my studio in Point Richmond, California.

When I am making, I am excavating, moving freely between photography, paint, and collage the way a child moves through a wonderland, following what calls rather than what is planned. Hidden things surface: love notes, symbols, songs, colors, and forms that become messages I didn't know I was carrying.

What I am always after is depth: beyond the surface, in the interior space, in the person standing before it.”

- Diane Epstein

To inquire about a work, arrange a studio visit, or begin a commission conversation, make the connection ↓ ↓