Primrose Diakow
Primrose Diakow graduated from the Alberta College of Art (Now the Alberta College of Art & Design) with a specialization in Painting and Sculpture in 1966, during which time she also studied privately with Katie Ohe and Janet Middleton. She undertook MFA research in painting, drawing, and etching at the University of Calgary, where she also studied Ukrainian. In the 1960s, Diakow served as an interpreter for Cosmic Awareness Communications, an organization dedicated to helping people discover their divine truth and cosmic awareness. She has held membership with the Alberta Society of Artists and exhibited her work in solo and group shows regionally.
The Alberta landscape, Diakow’s Ukrainian heritage, Byzantine traditions in art, and respect and reverence for the earth all motivate her work, which depicts landscapes, figures, and religious concepts in acrylic, oil, enamel, watercolour, and clay sculpture. Her portraits especially express what she feels about her life and about God, and take on not just documentary but prophetic qualities. Diakow’s subjects sit for her in their own spaces, where she does preliminary drawings, then she completes the paintings in her home studio from memory. Considering the photograph a dead image, she believes that “if an artist has to copy a photograph, he or she might as well forget about trying to do a painting.”
The Alberta landscape, Diakow’s Ukrainian heritage, Byzantine traditions in art, and respect and reverence for the earth all motivate her work, which depicts landscapes, figures, and religious concepts in acrylic, oil, enamel, watercolour, and clay sculpture. Her portraits especially express what she feels about her life and about God, and take on not just documentary but prophetic qualities. Diakow’s subjects sit for her in their own spaces, where she does preliminary drawings, then she completes the paintings in her home studio from memory. Considering the photograph a dead image, she believes that “if an artist has to copy a photograph, he or she might as well forget about trying to do a painting.”