Center on Halsted Art Gallery Opening October 2

Art Gallery Opening
Friday, October 2nd 2026
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Presented By
Center on Halsted
Location
3656 N Halsted Street
Chicago, IL
Get Directions
Description
Join us for the opening reception featuring paintings by Jeanette Diaz on our 2nd floor and Jeff Thiede on our 3rd floor. The exhibition opens October 2 from 6:30–8:30 PM and will remain on view through November 29.

Jeanette Diaz (she/her)
Chicago native Jeanette Diaz is an artist whose work lives between observation and intuition. Educated in Fine Art Photography and design at Columbia College Chicago, she approaches portraiture as a personal meditation on beauty, one shaped by emotion rather than realism. Self taught, she is influenced by classic painters known for their fearless use of color. Her work carries echoes of the Fauvist spirit and projects emotional intensity through a vibrant, expressive palette.
Working primarily in oil and oil pastel at mid scale to large formats, Diaz creates richly layered paintings that offer a contemporary interpretation of the portrait tradition. Her work explores storytelling and beauty, drawing from docudrama style photographs of her lived experiences. These images serve as the foundation for subjects often placed in intimate domestic settings, where she dissolves the boundary between the real and imagined through a lens that shifts between figuration and semi abstraction.
At the intersection of photography and painting, Diaz translates photographic moments onto canvas with the sensitivity of a painter. She begins by documenting meaningful experiences through her camera, then reimagines and personalizes them in oil paint, allowing each piece to evolve into a process of self reflection and discovery. Her practice is driven by a deep love of color and its capacity to hold emotional weight and psychological resonance.
Follow @iamjeanettediaz on Instagram and Twitter.

Jeff Thiede (he/him)
Jeff Thiede paints dreamlike images as creative solutions to the problems that confront him. He designs images by creating photo collages that combine his photographs into surreal scenes before translating them to canvas in oil paint.
Thiede’s paintings show a sharp instinct for composition and light, carried over from his training shooting film. He approaches painting much as he approaches design, constructing striking, cinematic images with vibrant colors. He also maintains an ongoing practice of painting his plants as a way of marking time and testing new techniques.

Fee
Free or a donation to the Center on Halsted