Diana Stewart is a native Californian. Her art career began on the walls of her bedroom at the age of five. She was caught painting flowers on the wallpaper.  Years later, after studying commercial art and design at Cal Arts and Art Center, she was hired as a Designer/Art Director at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. 

After 12 years with Disney, Ms. Stewart left to start her own design studio, Darien Way Design, named after the San Francisco street where her artwork truly began. Ms. Stewart’s work took a dramatic turn in 1992 when she left behind her growing graphic design business to live and work in Europe for several years.

Ms. Stewart began her fine art career in Paris.  She has continued to focus on oil and acrylic painting ever since.  After her return to Los Angeles in 1996, Stewart studied with master painter Renee Amitai and has since developed her own form of a contemporary realism.  Composition and color form the core of her work currently expressed as stunningly bold yet sensuous flowers.

“In my garden a long time ago a new plant appeared. It was a mystery as to how it got there and I took little notice of it until one day it bloomed with gorgeous yellow throated, blue-violet flowers. The utter beauty of those flowers was amazing and I felt compelled to paint them." Stewart explains.

Today her work is an extension of that early inspiration. She finds especially fascinating, the many subtle colors reflected onto the surface of the white petals from their surrounding environment. Creating these subtle variations of color is what most interests her because it dictates a palette of pale complimentary color combinations that illuminates the canvas.

These are paintings of beauty, sensuality and drama. They place one of nature’s most astonishing gifts, the flower, in the realm of the sublime.