Boy
Charcoal and Oil on Canvas

Diane Fleisch-Hughes

Diane Fleisch-Hughes is primarily a figurative painter using a non traditional technique. The style she has created over the years is unique to herself and has become recognizable. Hughes begins by drawing the figure in charcoal. She uses loose, free lines and if she makes a mistake she goes back and goes over it. Hughes exaggerates forms and tries to bring out her subjects most prominent feature. The figure fills the canvas. The line drawing stays, mistakes and all, and the paint, although it is oil paint, is diluted and allowed to spread and drip. The color is more an emotional response that Hughes has to her subject and she uses color freely. Hughes uses people as her subjects because each one is unique, each person has something special or different about them and she tries to emphasize that.

Her latest subjects have been children because she has the perfect models right in her home. She is fascinated by the way they grow, the way their arms and legs sometimes outgrown the rest of their bodies, and how the rest catches up as they "grow into themselves." The way children hold themselves says so much about what they are thinking or how they feel. It is an amazing process that Hughes continues to be in awe of.

Hughes has recently begun smaller pencil drawings, still figurative in a way, but she has been letting her imagination take off into new forms that are not anything recognizable at first glance. Hughes' intention is to make these drawings larger paintings, but right now she loves the light ad dark stark images that are created using only the pencil.

Diane Fleisch-Hughes was born and raised in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. She attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City where she received a BFA. Inspired by her travels throughout Europe and by living in various cities such as New York and Chicago, Hughes has continued painting and keeping sketchbooks since college. She now loves in Concord Township, Ohio with her husband, four children, two cats and a dog. Hughes currently holds a K-12 visual arts teaching license and teaches classes at the Willoughby Fine Art Association in Willoughby, Ohio. She has exhibited her artwork, both paintings and drawings, in galleries throughout Cleveland, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.