Diane Best
Other Worlds
January 10, 2025 – March 31, 2025

OTHER WORLDS
I have spent many years painting desert landscapes in a direct way:
“Seeking more and more remote, uninhabited and overlooked corners of the desert, I am interested in preserving or recording a single incredible moment of converging light and landscape.”
This was soulful work, spending days wandering the dirt roads to find that moment.
That was also a calmer time in our world and I felt it important to showcase the desert wilderness as it existed, to encourage preservation.

“Other Worlds” comes from a time of chaos, change and (hopefully) revolution of thought as the curtain is being pulled from what we once held true. I have also had health issues preventing me from wandering the back roads like I used to. So this work is all from memory of those travels, and short excursions into JTNP, creating worlds not entirely based in reality. Instead of background paintings for animation, these are background paintings for your life, and I invite you in….there’s always a path in..

DIANE BEST BIO
Born in Boston, Diane studied at Stanford University and the San Francisco Art Institute before moving to Los Angeles in 1983 where she worked as a commercial artist for the entertainment industry. Moving to Joshua Tree in 1995, she continued working freelance for Nickelodeon and other animation studios, but over time shifted the focus of her talent to capturing the intense drama of the desert landscape surrounding her utilizing painting, photography & film.

In recent years she has also discovered the ice deserts of the Arctic and Antarctic, making many trips to those areas collecting images. Moving to New Mexico in 2018, she returned to Joshua Tree 3 years later and is currently living & working there.
Her work has been shown throughout the country, including shows at the Southwest Museum and the Carnegie Museum who have one of her paintings in their permanent collection.

Her film work has been shown at several film fests, including the Timelapse Film Festival and the Exploratorium in San Francisco. She taught drawing workshops for the Desert Institute for many years, was chosen as a National Park artist to represent Joshua Tree, and has been profiled in publications such as: Palm Springs Live, Lifescapes: West Coast Art & Design, Art Patron Magazine, Galerie Magazine, and a KCET documentary for Artbound.

Artist website: www.dbestart.com