She’s been painting since she was 10. And that was 66 years ago. Diana Saha Albert, who lives in the Elms senior housing facility on Front Street in Secaucus, says her “apartment looks like a museum.”
And she’s right. The pleasant two-room unit overlooking the Meadowlands is filled with paintings, not just on the walls but leaning against the walls, along with empty frames, like new clothes waiting to be worn.
Albert grew up in Runnemede, N.J. and has been living in Secaucus for the past 20 years.
“I guess I always painted,” she said. “I started when I was very young, maybe 10.”
“I guess I always painted.” – Diana Saha Albert
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The Arts Students’ League was home to the hard drinking crew of Jackson Pollock-era abstract expressionists who hung out at the Cedar Tavern in New York, but that was before Albert’s time.
“I didn’t know any famous people,” she said. “There were lots of students from Park Avenue and Greenwich, Connecticut.”
She also worked at the Isabel O’Neil Studio Workshop in New York, famous for the art of “painted finishes” that mimicked marble, tortoise shell, and other materials.
“We did museum-quality work,” Albert said, “on furniture and trays, and other things for people to use in their homes.”
She will participate in a group show at the Secaucus Town Hall. The show opens on March 7 and runs for about a week. An opening reception will be held from 7 to 9 p.m.
The early years
In Secaucus, Albert spent most of her time on Mill Ridge Road with her husband Howard who was a milliner. “But when the pope said you didn’t have to wear hats in church any more, Howard dissolved the millenary business,” she said, “and went into wigs and then into men’s active wear.”
Albert’s husband was a huge boxing fan, a passion that influenced some of their life decisions. The couple was married by former mayor of Secaucus, James F. Moore, with champion fighter Emile Griffith in attendance. Howard’s love of boxing also put them in the same orbit as celebrities like actor Omar Sharif, whom she met in Paris, and Frank Sinatra. It was Sinatra’s first cousin, Buddy Gravante, who suggested to the Alberts that “Secaucus would be good for the kind of people you are.”
The kind of people they are? “Just plain people, down to earth, and not fancy,” Albert said. “I love Secaucus; I like the people. They’re good people.”
She likes town government, too. “The mayor and the City Council are wonderful,” she said.
Howard’s boxing passion took them abroad where Albert photographed scenes that later found their way onto her canvases.
“In London,” she recalled, “I was on a bus to the airport. I had my camera at the ready, and when we stopped at a red light, I took an interesting picture that had Harrods in the background.”
In Paris, she said, “I went all over the city and took a picture of the wife of a boxer walking in front of me.”
She also photographed and later painted Mahogany Road in St. Croix.
Albert, who describes herself as “more of a realist,” paints in oil and acrylic and estimates she’s done “hundreds and hundreds of pictures.”
She’s shown her work at the Secaucus Public Library three times, exhibiting as many as 32 paintings. She’s also exhibited at the village art show in Greenwich Village. Though Albert said she gives most of her paintings away to family and friends – she has three children and four grandchildren – she has sold them for as much as $1,000 apiece.
“One woman thought she hadn’t given me enough for a painting,” Albert said. Instead of the list price of $500, the woman gave her $1,000.
On her own
In addition to scenes from her travels, Albert paints flowers, fruit, still lifes, and landscapes close to home.
“Our backyard was the edge of the Meadowlands,” she said. “I’ve painted the Meadowlands. I love the Meadowlands. I painted some thistles from Mill Creek Point.”
She said painting has always been an avocation that she pursued while working as a full-time wife and mother.
“To tell you the truth,” she revealed, “I should have done more painting when I was younger. I tried but my husband was kind of possessive.”
Her husband died two years ago and now she’s using her maiden name – Saha – as part of her official name, and she’s “pushing” her painting habit.
“I love to paint,” she said. “I have to keep painting.”
Kate Rounds can be reached at krounds@hudsonreporter.com..