‘Spreading joy one dot at a time’…what a beautiful way for Amy Diener to describe her life’s journey of creativity. It comes as no surprise that her incredible works are gaining popularity in the art world. What’s even more amazing is that this incredible artist suffers from OCD…yes, you heard it right, she has had a long history of battling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Diener is not any run-of-the-mill artist, she specializes in dot paintings. She uses dots to create intricate and detailed mandalas, animals, trees, flowers, portraits, and figures of stunning beauty. But why dot art? She explains on her website, “…painting dots has served as a form of art therapy for me. It has helped me alleviate my suffering in unimaginable ways.”
Of course, Diener’s dot paintings are not easy to create. The process requires a lot of focus and repetition and a steady hand and an unwavering mind. She gets her inspiration from the works of Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese contemporary artist, who uses art as a coping mechanism for her hallucinations.
This American artist, who was born in New York, USA but is currently based in Bangkok, Thailand, loves to travel and this allows her to get inspired by the colors from nature and surroundings that she encounters during her trips. Her creative eye and her acute sense of color enable her to capture the vivid hues in her mind’s eye.
Diener considers dot painting as a form of meditation that brings her to a state of, as she describes it, ‘liminality’, that is, a pause or space in between. According to her, it is this space where thought becomes silenced and she becomes aware of the present moment. Dot paintings and therapy helped her recover from the dreaded OCD, which no longer interferes with her daily routine.
