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The accomplishments of Diana
Levine Madaras as an artist, gallery owner and founder of a non-profit
foundation for the aid of animals, celebrate her passions. During
the last 14 years, Diana’s brightly colored watercolor and
acrylic paintings of desert and Southwest scenes, tropical locals,
architecture, animals and flowers have been featured in one-woman
and juried shows and hung in the Tucson Museum of Art. In 1999,
she opened Madaras Gallery and now displays her art in two Tucson
locations. Diana is also represented by galleries in the United
States and the Bahamas. She is a Signature Member of the Southern
Arizona Watercolor Guild and has completed commissions for major
resorts, including Sheraton, Loews and Miraval. Her love of animals
inspired Diana to create the Art for Animals Foundation, also
in 1999, to support animal abuse prevention and help abused animals.
As an undergraduate at Douglass College, Diana received the Physical Education Award for Outstanding Graduate and played varsity tennis and lacrosse. Diana graduated with highest honors with a degree in physical education and health, and earned a master's degree in biomechanics from the University of Arizona in Tucson the following year. She remained in Tucson and began a career in sports promotion, founding Marathon Marketing. Her clients included the LPGA and PGA golf tournaments, football bowl games and celebrity tennis tournaments. Diana was driven to succeed in a male-dominated sports marketing industry.
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She received
the Rotary Club of Tucson’s 4-Way Award, the highest honor
given to a non-Rotarian for community service. In 2004, she was
named Woman of the Year by New Beginnings for Women and Children.
She was named to the Toms River High School South Hall of Fame in
2005, honoring her as an artist and entrepreneur. This spring, Diana
was nominated for the Tucson Pima Council for the Arts Outstanding
Small Business award.
Diana provides community service very close to her heart, as founder
of the Art for Animals Foundation. Her concern for animals is born
of a lifetime of family care for animals. Both her father, Bernard
Levine AG ’51, and brother, Richard Levine, are veterinarians
in New Jersey, and her sister, Sandra Levine R ’82, hosts
a New Jersey Network program which promotes the adoption of abandoned
pets. And, Dorothy Lott-Levine DC ’52, her mother, studied
zoology.
See www.madaras.com to view her work.
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With
a thriving business, Diana had little time to pursue her passion
for art, one she explored in high school and college. In 1993, a
trip to the Bahamas rekindled her desire to paint. She went on to
study with well-known artists around the country for the next three
years, and sold her marketing business in 1996.
Madaras Gallery began with 100 clients and has grown to 16,000.
contributes more than $50,000 of art each year to more than 100
charities. Diana’s annual art calendar benefits the Arthritis
Foundation, which named her Philanthropist of the Year in 1999.
For the American Cancer Society, she creates the featured painting
of their fund-raising event each spring. She also donates art to
the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Therapeutic Riding of Tucson, and
the Boys and Girls Club, of which she is a board member.
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