Daria Deshuk, Artist
Daria Deshuk, an artist and presence on the South Fork art scene since the 1980s, died on March 9 in Bridgehampton. She was 60 years old.
Ms. Deshuk exhibited her artwork at Guild Hall, the New Jersey State Museum, and galleries in Southampton and elsewhere on the East End. She was an artist in residence in the Dominican Republic for a time and a member of the National Arts Club. In 2004, she moved to Bridgehampton with a partner, David Kushnir, a real estate investor who survives, and established a studio there, Deshuk Rivers Studio.
Ms. Deshuk was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 4, 1956, one of the five children of Sasha Deshuk and the former Sydell Polks. Her mother died of what was said to be a brain aneurysm when Ms. Deshuk was 7, which had a huge impact on the rest of her life and her artwork. She graduated from Springfield Gardens High School on Long Island.
According to Roxanne Robinson, a friend, Ms. Deshuk’s art “predates today’s media fascination with street culture and fashion,” and she would often photograph and then paint images of characters she saw in daily life in New York. “Her artwork evolved into a more metaphysical style, inspired by her spiritual path of healing the pain of the loss of her mother, often depicting herself and others as angels set among the natural beauty of eastern Long Island,” Ms. Robinson wrote.
Ms. Deshuk earned a bachelor of fine arts in painting at the Parsons School of Design in Manhattan in 1978. This was followed by a master’s, also in painting, at Hunter College. She was entrenched in the art scene of the East Village in the early 1980s, where she did performance art, sometimes becoming the subject of her own tableaus. She was a member of Performance Space 122 on First Avenue near St. Mark’s Place and also did performance art at the legendary Club 57.
When she was 22, Ms. Deshuk met the musician and renowned artist Larry Rivers and they lived together in Southampton and New York for 15 years, remaining best friends until his death in 2002. Their son, Sam Deshuk Rivers, who survives, lives in Maryland. “I want people to know how much my mother and father loved each other,” he said. Ms. Deshuk took her own life.
In addition to her son, she is survived by three sisters, Amy Friscia Holler and Claudia Deshuk, both of Manhattan, and Valerie Wechsler of Florida, and a brother, Alex Deshuk of Arizona. She is also survived by two of Mr. Rivers’s sons, Joseph Rivers and Steven Rivers. She was close to one of Mr. Rivers’s daughters, Gwynne Rivers, who lives in Maine, and according to Ms. Robinson, assumed a grandmotherly role for Ms. Rivers’s three children.
Ms. Deshuk’s mother was Jewish but converted to Russian Orthodoxy when she married Ms. Deshuk’s father. Because of that, there was a blessing at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in East Meadow, a church her family had helped found, on Friday, and a service led by Rabbi Rafe Konikov at the Bellmore Funeral Home in East Meadow. A memorial gathering will be held at Guild Hall on April 22.
The family has suggested memorial donations to the Treatment Advocacy Center, treatmentadvocacycenter.org. Those wishing to write can send a note to the family at P.O. Box 2155, Bridgehampton 11932.
Ms. Deshuk had a large circle of friends whose lives, according to Ms. Robinson, she touched deeply. She was a “welcoming force that drew them together for gatherings, dinners, art openings, and benefits,” as well as for bonfires on the beach in Bridgehampton. She was able to help people in ways that she could not help herself, Ms. Robinson said.