View of Martha Diamond’s “1980–1989,” 2021. Magenta Plains, New York.
Over the course of her fifty years as a painter in New York, Martha Diamond has applied her love of place and structure to canvases that capture the architecture of the five boroughs in striking hues and energetic, wet-on-wet brushstrokes. On the occasion of “1980–1989,” an exhibition of oil paintings and studies on Masonite made during the titular decade—on view at Magenta Plains in New York through February 17—Diamond looks back on her childhood in the city, her affiliation with the New York School, her informal education in painting, and her artistic community.