"Grey Study," 2021 Grey and White Mixed Media Collage by Diane Love

"Grey Study," 2021 is a mixed media collage by Diane Love from her latest series, Études, in back, white, shades of gray, lavender and a splash of burgundy. Fragments of paper and photographs are assembled into dynamic forms further animated by calligraphic strokes.

In music an étude is an exercise, Diane explains, "I call these works Études because they exercise my imagination by finding new visual connections in work that I have made before. For instance, I have hundreds of darkroom prints, drawings and watercolors that never realized their full potential , but were too interesting to discard. As a result I have a gold mine of images ready to be imagined. I call it "recycling love:" finding new connections between shapes, textures and colors. These are my Études, rhythmic studies in which I create a collage from fragments of earlier works, completing them with calligraphic brush strokes.

Diane has always felt that art has been her lifelong companion providing her with the freedom to express herself with a multitude of mediums and materials.
For nearly two decades Diane Love's eponymous shop on Madison Avenue in Manhattan embraced the Scope of her creativity where she sold her home accessory and fashion creations which are still collected today. She soon established herself as a style icon in her own right with A-list tastemakers such as Jackie Onassis, Estée Lauder, Albert Hadley, Sister Parish, Mario Buatta and Valentino. Major department stores and companies such as Mikasa, Trifari and Saks Fifth Avenue licensed her wide ranging lifestyle and fashion products to distribute and Bloomingdale's housed its own Diane Love boutique. During the 1970s, Diane's spectacular floral arrangements caught the eye of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York City Opera who both hired her as a flower consultant while Macmillan, Inc, published her first book, "Flowers Are Fabulous For Decorating."

After Diane closed her shop in 1986 to pursue her passion in Fine Art, she has had 11 solo exhibitions of her paintings and photographs, and is currently represented by a prestigious gallery in New York. She authored, "YES/NO DESIGN," published by Rizzoli, New York and by Flammarion, in Paris.

In her numerous pursuits, Fine Art, photography, writing, fashion, flower arranging, acting and as a cabaret singer, Diane Love is best described as a Renaissance woman