Theodore (“Ted”) Diamond

Ted Diamond was an artist who spent much of his life, obsessed with suicide, eventually taking his own life at forty-seven years of age. 

Although Diamond briefly studied at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, he did not enjoy a conventional education nor a career as a trained artist. Most of the work was created while he was living in a public psychiatric hospital in the Boston area; even under these harsh conditions he found precious moments to paint.

A group of his intimate paintings in gouache mounted on black paper and housed in several notebooks were found in his room after his death by a supporter and friend who kept them safe for nearly 30 years.  The energy of these tempera paintings and their deft handling results in a powerful scale beyond their humble size. They function to present emotional, neurotic content, elevated to fine art by coloristic and painterly mastery. These are either self-portraits or renderings of other patients encountered on the psych ward in his hospital stays. These remarkable works, an “Outsider’s’” vision in the deepest sense, have never been seen publicly until now.