Diana Contreras was born in 1981 in Chiclayo, Peru and grew up in Miami, Florida. She had a natural gift for drawing at an early age and was deeply affected by the animated movies of Walt Disney. Their influence had a lasting effect on Contreras’s developing visual language. Her work has been seen in exhibitions and private collections throughout the United States and abroad.
Contreras received her B.S. in Art Education from Florida International University. She partook in the study abroad program in Florence, Italy where she studied the masters of High Renaissance. Subsequent to that she attended the Post-Graduate program of Art in Teaching at Florida International University. In 2010 she enrolled at the Art Students League of New York in New York City. Diana Contreras became greatly inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat after watching The Radiant Child documentary. It was then when she began taking her art to the streets. Also, Diana began to create the idea of combining her love of caricatures with the painting techniques of the Old Masters.
Diana Contreras’s primary medium is oil paint yet, enjoys experimenting with anything she can make a mark with or on. Frida Kahlo’s ability to expose her emotions has been an inspiration. Fashion, culture, and street art have also impacted Contreras’s art. Her instinctive passion for expressing mood and emotion on canvas, paper, and walls along with her mastery of technique in oil portraiture has become her individual style.