Diana Simard is a West Texas painter and printmaker who uses the language of landscape and light to explore the tranquil and miraculous in the natural world. Through close examination, quiet meditation, and geological research she paints layered, chromatic landscapes that exist somewhere between earth, sky, time, memory, and feeling.

Fade into Light is a new body of work that combines oil painting and monotype on paper mounted on panels. Each piece begins with a substrate made of hundreds of layers of carefully applied pigment-dense etching inks, translucent base layers, and mica dust. This technique creates an otherworldly glow of warm and cool hues that shimmer and vibrate like desert afterglow.

On top of these layers, Diana paints what surrounds her on the Marfa plateau—the sun setting behind the Puertacitas, the ocotillo, sotol, and yucca rooted into the earth. Through her meticulous technique as well as her practice of reading the landscape and studying the planetary forces that shape the desert, she channels the desert’s infinite stillness and its deceptions. Fade into Light explores the places along the horizon where mountains seem to simultaneously fade in and out of view, where ancient volcanoes have softened gracefully into far-away body parts, where the familiar, daily view becomes a mystery you can’t unsee.