Artist Statement
I am a fine art photographer and biophilic artist whose practice was born in Italy, and carries the living world into the spaces people inhabit.
I was a collector with an inexplicable archive, and no idea yet what it was for. It started with photographs: walls, light, the particular way shadow falls on an ancient surface, textures I pressed myself against, camera raised, unwilling to leave until I had captured each crack, each tone, each trace of what had passed through there. Female figures carved in stone that most people passed without a glance, photographed and kept for some future time I couldn’t yet name. I collected without agenda, without destination, following only what called to me. Over time, and especially since returning to California, my collecting expanded to include fabrics and shells, beads and feathers, natural elements gathered on walks. It would be years before I understood that I wasn’t collecting objects. I was collecting a language.
I have always thought of this work in terms of Pentimento, an Italian word for repentance, used in art to describe the phenomenon where earlier layers of paint or drawing resurface through what was painted over them, revealing the evidence of earlier decisions, changes of mind, and the full history of the making. My life has been like that. And so has my art. Each layer present, none entirely erased.
“Once, during my twenty year sojourn in Rome, I had a dream. I was a small figure crawling in the dirt, looking for the light, unnoticed. The next day, wandering with camera in tow as I often did, I found myself in an ancient courtyard I had not known was there. And there she was: a tiny sculpted female figure, the size of my pinky, hidden between a whole other scene. I stood very still. Because I knew her. I had been her the night before, in my dream, crawling in the dirt, reaching for the light, making such an effort to come alive again. That courtyard was no accident. Neither was she.
So I made her come alive. I created a fresco image with many layers of felt-sense textures and enlarged her to twice life-size. I call her The Dreamer.
That courtyard, that figure, that dream became the compass for everything that followed. I had spent years counseling expats, artists, and people in the tender work of reinvention, working with those who had lost contact with themselves, what they loved, and the creative life they couldn’t even imagine. I understood, from the inside, what it meant to hold a longing you hadn’t yet given yourself permission to honor.
And then one day, about 7 years since we called Rome our home, on a train to Naples with many friends. Sitting next to me a friend who was a business coach, turned that understanding back on me. She said: Diane, everyone knows you are multi-talented, but they are confused about who you really are. You are a therapist, a creative coach, you co-founded As the Romans Do, you lead photography and creative retreats, and you are an artist. If you could choose just one, what would you be? And in a heartbeat I knew. An artist. A photographer who makes art. She told me to act as if, to start telling people that is what I was. Within months, opportunities began finding me. A photo shoot at the Belgian Ambassador’s residence led to an invitation to shoot from their private balcony above the Forum. That led to an offer of a solo exhibition, Roma Autentica, with hundreds of dignitaries invited. And that terrifying yes led to months of experimentation, searching for something deeper than straight photography, something that showed what I truly saw. That is where Fresco Photography was born.
I coined the term in 2004 for a practice that had been growing in me through years of wandering Rome with a camera and full attention: superimposing original photography of monuments, statues, and ancient places with the textural patinas of the walls and worlds they inhabit. Built through multiple translucent layers until each image holds a weight that feels historic, atmospheric, muted, somewhere between a painting and a photograph, and belonging fully to neither.
Over time the practice deepened into Fresco Dreamscapes: works that do not depict a place but construct one, assembled from a personal archive of photographs, paintings, and sculptural fragments into entirely new imaginary worlds. Figures move 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.
More recently, the work has expanded into Mixed-Media Collages: built from paint, handmade papers and textures, botanical forms, and at their most personal, fragments of text, fabrics, and keepsakes. More three-dimensional, often richer in color, and more openly hand-made than the photographic works. Each one a living archive of the making itself.
All three bodies of work share the same root: what researchers now call biophilic art — work that carries the depth, mystery, and aliveness of the natural and cultural world into the spaces people inhabit. Cycles of nature, roots, ruins, waves, and blooms, and the patina of time acting on human-made things settle into a biological familiarity. The fresco fractal-like imagery tends to relax the mind. The work promotes healing and well-being — not as a claim but as an experience.
The fresco images are infused with ageless allure and visceral, translucent depth, with stories that surface unbidden, and dreams that find their way in.
I am also a creative coach and retreat leader. Through Artful Agility I lead Artist Salon Retreats in my studio overlooking the San Francisco Bay and in Rome and the Italian countryside, working with artists and people in creative transition, those who have a longing they have been carrying and are ready to honor it. The practice of making and the practice of accompanying others in their making have never been separate for me. They come from the same place.
I have offered this kind of creative freedom to others for years, the open studio, the materials, the permission to begin without knowing where you are going. But it was only when I finally gave myself the same permission, joining a group of professional artists with a blank canvas and no agenda, that something in me that had been waiting finally let go. The large-scale Mixed-Media Collages that emerged from that experience, Rooted in Her Cells, Inscribed in Love, The Living Archive, are the fullest expression yet of what happens when the maker stops holding back.
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. I build each piece imagining it does to the viewer what nature does, drawing the body in, loosening what the mind has tightened, and opening a feeling of recognition so deep the monkey mind simply forgets to intrude.”
Hotel Babuino 35; commissioned Diane to create a 26’ long collage for its lobby/ entrance.
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Fine Art Photographer and Artist Diane Epstein Art
2003-presentFounder, Artist Salon
2013-present
An international community of artists, where creative professionals can exchange ideas, collaborate and organize multidisciplinary exhibitsFounder, Artful Agility
2019-present
Creativity and wellness retreats for change-makers and leaders across industries that bring deeper connection, promote healing and foster creativity.BACKGROUND
Diane Epstein was born in New York City, grew up in California, spent her high school years in London and lived in Rome from 1995-2016, after which she relocated back to the San Francisco Bay Area. Diane pioneered the art of Fresco Photography, a unique photographic interpretation of traditional fresco painting.Diane’s practice as a therapist and creativity coach helped her to realize that it was her fate to be an artist in her own right, and immerse herself in this artful journey to the sacred, illuminating the spirit of place and nature’s timeless beauty.
Diane’s fresco images can be found in public spaces and private collections worldwide. She has exhibited in many galleries, museums, embassies and has been commissioned to create large-scale images for hospitality, residential and corporate spaces around the world.EDUCATION
Masters of Arts Degree in Psychology and Health CounselingJohn F. Kennedy UniversityGraduated with honors
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Liberal ArtsSonoma State UniversityGraduated with honors
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Selected Exhibitions
Gerald Bland Gallery, New York; Exhibiting 15 large-scale frescoes of Diane Epstein’s Fresco Photography 2019 - 2020 (new show opening in early Spring)Angels, Goddesses and the Spirit of Italy (Solo Opening) | December 2011 – February 2012
Beneath the Surface (Solo Opening)| October – November 2010
Room Art Gallery, Mill Valley, CA; Fresco Photography: An Open Book, February 1- March 31. Art Lovers Opening: February 16, 2019. New Fresco images shown alongside Miro’, Chagall and Picasso / Each month in 2019
Gerald Bland Gallery, New York; Transforming Interior Space with Fresco Photography. (Solo Opening) | April 2015. Continued representation and showing to the present. Upcoming show | May 2019
Shears & Window, San Francisco; Diane Epstein: Transforming Interior Space with Fresco Photography (Solo Opening) |September 2015 – April 2016.
St. Stephen’s Cultural Center Foundation, Rome: Meanwhile: Light and Presence (Group Show with the Artist Salon) May 2014 – June 2014
Paolo Antonacci Gallery, Rome; Capturing the Timelessness of Venice, Rome & the Italian Countryside | (Solo Show) September – October 2011
Panopticon Gallery, Boston; Photography Salon (Group Show) | May 2011
Susan Calloway Fine Arts, Washington, DC; Beneath the Surface (Solo Show) | November – Dec. 2010
American Embassy, Rome; Diane Epstein’s Latest Works (Solo Show)| October – November 2009
American Academy, Rome; Through the Eyes of Women (Group Show) | May 2006
Residence of the Belgian Ambassador to Italy, Rome, Roma Autentica (Solo Show) | May 2005
John Cabot University, Rome; Roma Autentica (Solo Show) | May – June 2005
Museum at Palazzo Boccarini, Amelia, Umbria; Le Foto di Diane Epstein (Solo Show) | June 2005
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Stanford University commissioned Diane for 4 large-scale diptych and triptych fresco collages printed on stretched canvas entitled: Open Book (72"x 72") Hands of Connection (72"x 72"), Shapes of Wisdom (84" x 60"), and the Mystery of Knowledge (84" x 60") for four lobbies of graduate school residential halls
Rome Luxury Suites, Babuino 35, Rome; Large-scale (26 feet long) collage with 325 images, printed on printed on fine art paper and backed in aluminum, inlaid in the wall of the lobby with special lighting above the collage, with coating that eliminated the need for glass. An additional twelve fresco photographs (43’H X 65"W each) were installed in their lounges and suites. Permanent installation.
Private Commissions
Trees on Sliding Glass, (85"H x 40" W), Sonoma, California. Printed and inlaid in glass with light reflecting behind the imageCollage of A.S Roma Soccer Trio commissioned by one of the U.S owners of the soccer team in Rome. Printed on Hahnemühle fine art paper (each at 40"H x 40"W). The triptych of the soccer balls consists of a Golden Ball; Romulus & Remus and a Fire Ball. Fresco photography triptych for L.A. offices
Dorskind Family Collection Alongside the prominent collection of world-class photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, purchased fresco photographs by Diane
Museum of Rome’s Caffe Braschi, (Piazza Navona) Rome; Showing of fifteen various sized fresco photographs stretched on canvas and printed on Hahnemühle fine art paper, as well as color/sepia-toned images of cafe life.
Hotel Mario de Fiori 37, Rome, Six images (43"H X 65"W each) printed on Hahnemühle fine art paper of architectural fresco photographs and framed for their suites and lounge, and 36"H X 87"W image for the lobby. Permanent installation.
La Scala in Malaysia; Ten large-scale fresco photographs printed on Hahnemühle fine art paper and framed throughout the luxury space and restaurant.
Ceasar’s Palace, Las Vegas; (50’H X 50"W) fresco photograph for a public space. Permanent installation.
Sheraton Hotel, Rome; Four (65"H X 43"W) sepia toned architectural images printed on printed on Hahnemühle fine art paper and framed for public space. Permanent installation.
Hotel Babuino 181, Rome; Commissioned to create over sixty photographs, including frescoes for lobby, breakfast area and 16 suites (64" x 43" each), and sepia-toned architectural details printed on printed on Hahnemühle fine art paper throughout the hotel, as well as a large-scale diptych for the dining area. Permanent installation.
Hotel Margutta 54, Rome; Fresco photograph stretched on canvas (72"H X 51"W) for the hotel entrance and 4 other large-scale fresco images printed on Hahnemühle fine art paper for the suites. Permanent installation.