John Henry Diehl
(b. May 1, 1950), artist, is also a longtime actor.
“Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.”
-Jasper Johns
In the creative gospel according to John Henry Diehl, diverse forms and outlets of artistic expression become parts of a cohesive whole. The driving energies which have let him create distinctive sculptural work and other modes in his rough-fine art pursuit are somehow innately linked to his rich body of work as an actor. It’s all of a piece, in a creative quest and practice which both defines him and is in a constant state of evolution, reflecting the Jasper Johns maxim above, words Diehl lives and works by.
His own route to art and acting has been circuitous, which colors his perspective and continuing creative journey. Growing up in Ohio, in a sternly Roman Catholic household, Diehl developed a complicated relationship with organized religion, a touchpoint for his ongoing aesthetic investigations.
Dirt, concrete, wood, stone, plaster, and old sheet metal are some of the resource materials from which he works, using self-taught techniques and perseverance. These pieces depict a lost soul in a post-apocalyptic world.
At 19, Diehl fled from the Ohio River Valley and landed in New York City, where he remained for eight years and built experiential fiber while working a series of “school of hard knocks” jobs—truck driver/mover, bartender, hospital orderly, waiter, whatever. Art-making was via drawing and other means, as he went along, including a period of travels abroad and time spent in an Israeli kibbutz in 1969 and living for a year in Amsterdam, in a “cracked house” as a squatter. Some nefarious activities in distant locations were involved, and he landed back in New York, and then Chicago, finally heading west to Southern California. There, he channeled hallucinations into drawings, paintings and other musings.
Described by the Los Angeles Times as a “versatile and immediately recognizable” character actor, noting that Diehl has “largely avoided the typecasting that is an accepted part of most character actors' careers.” Describing his work in Wender’s post-9/11 film Land of Plenty, New York Times critic A.O. Scott hailed his “wry, cunning performance.” Diehl has been a member of The Actors Studio since 2004.
As his IMDb entry expands, so goes Diehl’s growing interest in what happens in his art studio. Apart from his fascination with the physical manifestation of the Johns-ian “object” manipulation process, Diehl’s experience with the Church--and the dreams that experience has evoked--have helped to feed his creativity for making his conceptual art. He comments that “the strict, dark and foreboding approach the Church was teaching at that time has, in some perverse way, been a gift to me.”
Diehl, familiar with the Jemez Valley for a couple of decades, moved here in 2020.
