John Henry Diehl (born May 1, 1950), artist, has also been an American film, television, and stage actor for  over three decades and has directed and produced as well. You can find his resume at imdb.com

"Mud, rubbish and dirt are man's companions all his life; shouldn't they be precious to him, and isn't one doing man's service to remind him of their beauty?"

-- Jean Dubuffet

“John makes his living as an actor but has always made art.

“I suspect that his sculptural pieces have been created over a long period of time - there is none of that manic iterative process that is at the heart of creativity whereby the artist digs himself out of a hole by producing piece after piece of almost non-existent difference until a new direction slowly emerges out of the sameness.

“Here, instead, is a work of many directions but with an abiding theme: America embodied in the matrix of family, materialism, and spirituality.” (more...)

“Diehl’s best work has a primal, earthy quality. Traveling Church which is quite literally a small model church on wheels and Ark, a path-worked assemblage of wood and metal in the approximate form of a tiny diluvian boat clamped in a wood worker’s vise: it appears to be in dry-dock awaiting a re-fit, awaiting the deluge. Painting and sculpture inhabit a space where our customary ways of seeing are knocked askew. The church with wheels that John Diehl presents (traveling Church) extends the range of the possible. “

“In a gallery we stand ready to receive new meaning - a piece of rusted sheet metal perhaps a portal to a deeper involvement in the cosmos.” — John Davis, Architect, Urbanwildland.org, 2011

Money Trumps Peace 2009

wood, paint, sheet metal

32”X7”X5”

John Henry Diehl is a recovering alcoholic/addict. His mother’s suicide more than half a century ago and extreme religious upbringing in the catholic church has made an indelible effect on his life, both positive and negative. 

“The strict, dark and foreboding approach the Church was teaching at that time has, in some perverse way, been a gift to me.

“On the positive side, I try everyday to accept my experience as a human being whatever that may be. The courage to be. ‘Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of nonbeing.*’” —John Diehl

*The Courage to Be, by Paul Tillich

Dirt, concrete, wood, paint, and steel are some of the resource materials from which Diehl works.

Take a closer look at Landscape Quadriptych

Click on each image to enlarge

Finally, a few sold pieces for your perusal