![]() ![]() 1957-58.Įven earlier, Diehl already professed interest in art. Guy Diehl, The Monitor & The Merrimac, pencil and crayon on paper, 8.5 x 11 inches, c. It’s a reminder of how that moment has shaped his life. Today, the drawing, once in his grandfather’s barbershop, hangs among the paintings in Diehl’s own art collection at his home in Marin County. The epiphany changed how he would interpret the world around him. He had rendered a three-dimensional illusion onto a two-dimensional surface. Diehl knew he had discovered something special. All of a sudden, as he used a ruler, pencil, and crayon, elements of formal perspective fell into place. Diehl was trying to copy an image of a paddle-wheel steamboat he had found in a National Geographic magazine. When he was eight years old, Diehl recalls drawing in his family’s living room while his father and grandfather watched Friday night boxing on television. Guy Diehl, River Boat, pencil and crayon on paper, 8 x 9.75 inches, 1957. Diehl found his expression in drawing, and he soon learned that he had a talent for it. What Diehl lacked in reading comprehension, however, he eventually made up for in art aptitude. Although they arranged for Diehl to have phonics tutors and teaching aids, his parents exhibited frustration that their only child was not destined for a future filled with words in what they imagined would be a professional occupation. ![]() Although more accepted today, in the 1950s, being the only child in a working-class family, his parents struggled to come to terms with Diehl’s learning difference. He began to manifest difficulty reading at an early age, something that has persisted to this day, albeit with far less intensity. Guy Louis Diehl was born in 1949 near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and grew up in Sharpsburg, just 20 minutes north, in the Western part of the State. His skill at drawing was the one thing that he fully embraced, and that would extend as a thread, through his formative years. While distinct, the two concerns worked to strengthen Diehl’s focus as he learned to render subjects with deft realism. Additionally, there was personal apprehension that he would be drafted to serve in the Vietnam War, a feeling many of his friends shared, which buttressed the reasons to stay in college and secure a draft deferment. This began with his family’s belief that his dyslexia would keep him from finding a job that could provide for his needs in adulthood. In many respects, it can be said that Diehl’s path as a professional artist was compelled by uncertainty. Guy Diehl’s elegant and carefully composed contemporary paintings disguise the tensions and challenges that he first confronted at the start of his art career. The Early Days - Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania His significance as a major artist in his own right, who has exhibited in Bay Area galleries for over 40 years, and is included in numerous public collections, is evident and underscores the need to amplify the information available about his life and career. Diehl is best known as a realist painter who studied with important first-generation Pop and photorealist artists such as Mel Ramos, Richard McLean, and Robert Bechtle. This essay explores aspects of his story not previously known and includes a plethora of images that help to contextualize his career. Guy Diehl is an important contemporary still life artist whose biography is not well known, given Diehl reticence to talk about himself. Guy Diehl, Take-Out Only, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 inches, 2020. ![]()
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