Diane Tintor

I was born on January 17, 1952 in Lackawanna, New York, a steel mill town bordering Buffalo. It was a multi-ethnic, working class environment. I am a second generation Serbian-American, raised very close to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Both were integral to my sense of identity and to my world growing up. I learned the traditional music and dance of the Serbian people. And the icons of the church were the first art form that I experienced as a child.

I had never traveled until I went to Ecuador as an exchange student in high school. For the first time I got a sense of the enormous scope of the world out there, a new country, different culture, and extraordinary landscape. It was an incredible revelation that significantly changed and influenced my perspective.

Between my freshman and sophomore years at SUNY Buffalo I took a tour of Europe during which my fascination with the art of the museums there inspired my course of study. Starting in Amsterdam at the Rijksmuseum where I was overwhelmed by the work of artists like Van Gogh and Rembrandt, and so many others, I headed straight to every major museum while traveling through the capitals of Europe. I graduated from SUNY Buffalo with a Bachelors in Art History in 1974.

For several years after graduate school I remained in Las Cruces and made a living designing and fabricating jewelry. I also met my beautiful blue-eyed Appaloosa horse who was to be my companion for 20 years, with whom I wandered the mountains of New Mexico. With Gambler I saw breathtaking landscapes and experienced an indescribable sense of freedom and joy that I would never have known. A dream land opened up before my eyes and the experiences I had with him were to become some of the fondest memories of my life.

I had begun to sell my work at James Reid Ltd. in 1990 and eventually moved to Santa Fe in 1994 where the gallery was located. It was a great time to be in Santa Fe. There were artists from everywhere and gallery openings every weekend and new people. I studied flamenco dancing for about five years just for the exhilaration of entering into the realm of pure magic and beauty that the world of flamenco guitar, song, and dance embodied.

In the spring of 2000 I was hired by Santa Fe Community College to teach jewelry making. I was given the opportunity to build an outstanding program in Jewelry/Metal Arts there. I also taught courses in Art History and was invited to teach the History of World Architecture and later graduate seminars in architectural theory at the University of New Mexico.

As a student of Art History I had begun painting in a methods and materials course. I was so excited by it that after graduation I studied painting with Tony Sisti, a well-known Buffalo artist and gallery owner. I also started to explore jewelry making.

My first job after graduation was tending bar at a jazz club in Buffalo. It was fun for a while but not a very lucrative or promising occupation so I decided to take a road trip out west. I settled in New Mexico and enrolled at New Mexico State University for graduate study in studio art.

I happened to land at an art department that was recruiting artists from New York City for residencies. Graduate students also were invited from all over the world. It turned out to be a much more stimulating and sophisticated environment than one would have expected to find in a sleepy little town in southern New Mexico. I graduated from NMSU with a Masters in Studio Art and one in Art History.

I had begun to explore working in sculpture just before I started teaching. Having access to a great facility at the college I was able to hone my skills at bronze casting, welding, and other forms of metal fabrication. My work in sculpture still encompasses many of the techniques and materials used in jewelry making. Currently my sculpture is shown at Blackman Cruz in Los Angeles.

Aside from making my art, I love to read and study- mainly history, philosophy, metaphysics, and literature. I ride horses, cook, draw, paint icons, and travel. I go to Europe as often as I can, usually Italy and Greece. I still live in Santa Fe with my cats and still love being in New Mexico where I am surrounded by close friends and have the opportunity to hear world-renowned classical musicians in concert, see first-rate foreign films, meet interesting people, and enjoy the extraordinary landscape and light. Everything here as well as everything I read, study, and do inspire my work.