OLIVE DIAMOND
b. 1998, United StatesOlive Diamond’s ceramics and paintings look to both her own family history and her imagination to consider the human experience of migration, identity and displacement. The subjects of her artworks exist in abstract surroundings, asking viewers to consider what is home, and which memories move with us.
Early Years
Olive Diamond was born in 1998 in Los Angeles (where she still lives and works). She graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2021 with a BFA in painting and ceramics. Stories from her Jewish family—including tales of her grandmother, born in a refugee camp in Siberia, and other ancestors who escaped persecution via Russian forests—inform her artistic practice.
Olive Diamond: Artworks
Olive Diamond’s ceramics and paintings blend migration and mysticism—she said in 2024: “I am thinking a lot about the history of people moving across the world during times of hardship; how things cycle and repeat and what remains.” Crossing between abstraction (backgrounds) and figuration, Diamond’s works are sometimes reminiscent of Impressionism in their hazy brushstrokes, but also suggest photorealism.
The light and colour of the backgrounds to her paintings creates a dreamlike landscape for their subjects, raising questions about the passing-on of traditions and memories and trawling the past to create a framework for the present.
- Crystal Fugue (2025) is three panels of custom glaze on stoneware, placing almost-theatrical figures against an opulent background of rich blues, purples and greens, reminiscent of Romantic paintings.
- Play Things (2026) is part of Diamond’s Rehearsals for Living exhibition, focusing on the moments in childhood when humans become conscious of law, ritual, love and war. Three women are making teddy bears, but the space around them is not part of the assembly line—instead it is pure colour and gesture.
- Chrome and Tin (2026), also from Rehearsals for Living, is reminiscent of Rudolph Zallinger’s The March of Progress (1965) insofar as a row of figures ordered from left-right increases in ability. However, Diamond’s subjects are toys, leading to a little girl, above which is a chromatic array of ceramic tiles.
Olive Diamond: Exhibitions
Select Solo Exhibitions
- Rehearsals for Living, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles (2026)
- Spolia, Anat Ebgi, New York City (2025)
- To Be Sung and Remembered, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles (2024)
- Inherited Skies, Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles (2023)
- Unlikely Misstep, Unit London Platform, London (2022)
Select Group Exhibitions
- Primodial Procession, Atla, Los Angeles (2025)
- Earthbound, DC Moore Gallery, New York City (2025)
- Earthly Pleasures, Michael’s Santa Monica, Los Angeles (2024)
- Let Them Eat Off the Plate, Superhouse Gallery, New York City (2024)
- New Paintings, Sonya Gallery, New York City (2023)
- Eros is an In-Between, Rift Contemporary, Los Angeles (2023)
- Briefly Gorgeous, Phillips at Songwon Art Center, Seoul (2023)
- Psychic Distance: Powers of Observing Relationships, Loyal Gallery, Stockholm (2022)
- Corridor of Dreams, South Willard Gallery, Los Angeles (2022)
- You Lead Follow Me, Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles (2021)
- Group Exhibition 2, Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art, Fall River (2021)
- Look Who’s Coming to Dinner, Machines with Magnets Gallery, Pawtucket (2020)
Further reading
- Olive Diamond’s Instagram
- Olive Diamond’s website
- Artist page at Anat Ebgi
- 2024 video interview from Vernissage (behind a paywall)
- 2024 profile in Galerie magazine
- 2022 profile from Unit London
Olive Diamond FAQs
Does Olive Diamond make her own glazes?
Yes, Olive Diamond mixes her own glazes. As the text for her 2026 exhibition Rehearsals for Living explains, her glazes emerge “through trial, chance and reaction” by adjusting temperatures, compounds and firing conditions to achieve surfaces that may appear translucent or glassy, or that may have spots or blotches.
What are Olive Diamond’s influences?
Olive Diamond draws from the oral histories of her own family, as well as classical painting and folklore, to create her ceramics and paintings. In a 2022 video tour of her studio she said that her ceramics were “an amalgamation in my mind of a historical Jewish migration and the moments and stories in between”, while her paintings were about the views the characters might see on their journeys.
What materials and techniques does Olive Diamond use?
In her painting and ceramics, Olive Diamond uses earthy tones: rust, mineral blue, turquoise, crimson and smoky grey. She applies paint and glaze atmospherically, using bubbles, drips and pools to add texture and spark an exploration of unpredictability.
Ocula
View Olive Diamond's Artworks
Explore Olive Diamond's Exhibitions
Explore and Follow Artists Shaping Contemporary Art
A respected voice in contemporary art discourse.
Focusing on ambitious storytelling and insightful art-world commentary. Ocula Magazine publishes in-depth interviews, critical essays and timely analysis on the artists, exhibitions and ideas driving the global art world.
Learn more about Ocula Magazine
Showcasing the best of the art world.
Ocula partners with galleries from around the world to highlight their artists, artworks and exhibitions. Gallery membership is by application and invitation, with each member vetted by an independent panel.
Learn more about Ocula Membership
Specialises in the sale of major artworks.
Led by a team with deep ties to the world’s leading auction houses, galleries and collectors. Ocula’s advisory team offers bespoke services to high-net-worth clients from around the world who are looking to acquire the best of contemporary and modern art.
Learn more about our team and services