Daria Deshuk, artist, mother, sister, partner and friend of Bridgehampton, died on March 9, 2017. She was 60.
A longtime Hamptons resident, Ms. Deshuk was born on October 4, 1956, in Brooklyn and raised in Rosedale, in the borough of Queens, to father Sasha, a cab driver, and mother Sydell, a homemaker. Her mother died when Daria was 7 years old, an event that would shape her life profoundly, especially as expressed through her art. She received her BFA in painting from the Parsons School of Design in 1978 and earned a master’s of fine art from Hunter College while entrenched in the art scene of the East Village in the early 1980s. She became “living artwork,” participating in a number of various performance-art pieces at the legendary haunt, Club 57.
She was also a member of the P.S. 122 Artist Space.
When she was 22, she met American artist, musician, filmmaker and actor Larry Rivers, known for his abstract expressionist/pop art as well as a penchant for provocative art expressing the absurd and vulgar. Mr. Rivers and Ms. Deshuk were partners for 15 years, residing together in New York and Southampton. They had one son, Sam, who survives her. Said the younger Mr. Rivers “I want people to know how much my mother and father loved each other.” The elder Rivers died in 2002 from complications due to liver cancer.
Ms. Deshuks’s early painting style pre-dates today’s media fascination with street culture and fashion, often photographing and then painting images of characters she saw daily in New York City. 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.
She relocated to Bridgehampton full-time in 2004 with her partner, David Kushnir, a real estate investor, where she lived until she died.
Ms. Deshuk exhibited her works in several venues over the years, including a Henry Geldzahler Southampton show; Guild Hall in East Hampton; the New Jersey State Museum, as well as several galleries on the East End of Long Island. She was an artist-in-residence in the Dominican Republic and member of the National Arts Club. She created multiple pieces of art for various benefits and wrote articles for Fine Art Magazine.
She also left behind a large circle of friends whose lives she touched deeply. She played spiritual and literal mother to many of those in her circle, often giving others what she most lacked. Friends remembered her as a welcoming force that drew them together for gatherings, dinners, art openings and benefits, as well as the requisite beach journey, quite often to the famous bonfires at the beach. The free expression those in attendance experienced there epitomized the same joy and freedom of self-expression that she embodied throughout her life.
Besides her son, Sam Deshuk Rivers, 31, of Maryland, she is survived by three sisters, Amy Friscia Holler and husband Henry and son Tony of Long Island, Valerie Wechsler and husband Jay and daughter Allie of Florida, Claudia and son Sasha of Long Island, and brother Alex Deshuk and wife Karrie of Arizona; cousins, Ira and Carol Schussheim of New Jersey, Shelley Schussheim of Massachusetts and Michael Jessick of California, along with all of their children. She is also survived by stepdaughters, Gwynne Rivers of Maine and Larry Rivers’s sons, Joseph Rivers and Steven Rivers. Ms. Deshuk assumed the role of step-grandmother to Gwynne Rivers’s three children, Darcy, Oliver and Georgia.
Private services were held Friday, March 17, in North Bellmore. A memorial is being planned for Saturday, April 22, at 7 p.m. at Guild Hall in East Hampton.
Memorial donations may be made to the Treatment Advocacy Center, treatmentadvocacycenter.org. The address for card acknowledgment to the family on the website is Daria Deshuk, Box 2155, Bridgehampton, NY 11932.
on Mar 30, 2017