Abstraction too is at the core of Kuthy's paintings and Wolfson Ray's sculpture. Approaching nature through abstraction is not so far from the aims of traditional art as it may at first seem, since both artists who work in a representational style and many abstract painters are concerned with interpreting the observed world. For Kuthy and Wolfson Ray, it is in part, the search for essence, for some central meaning in what they see, for a distillation of the character or spirit of their subject, that has them choose abstraction.
Abstraction is the logical tool, since to abstract is to distill, and to distill is to intensify.
Paul Klee, the Swiss painter, was an early influence on both Kuthy and Wolfson Ray, who each spoke of Klee's love of nature, his playful and childlike quality, and the animated and colorful geometry of his paintings. Although Wolfson Ray and Kuthy have fully developed their own styles, it is still possible to see the seeds of Klee's inspiration at the core of their work. Both Kuthy and Wolfson Ray use the layering of elements and the seeming contradictions of grid-like patterns meshed with freer more organic forms to create a dynamic whole which is, of course, greater and more complex than the sum of its parts. Looking at a Diane Kuthy painting is like falling through layers of light into a parallel universe of color, motion, sound and atmosphere. It is not surprising that her work should elicit such a physical response since Kuthy is sensetive to the relationship between the tactile and the visual.