Some think the work of Daniel Martin Diaz is sacrilegious, but he says, "I'm actually coming from a positive way of looking at religious art."

A.E. Araiza / Arizona Daily Star

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As a child sitting in Mass, Daniel Martin Diaz would study the religious icons instead of listening to the sermon.

"Just being in church and seeing Christ and the blood coming down off his body, that just really made an impact on me," Diaz said in a phone interview.

"And I was … always trying to understand, 'What's going on here? What is this?' "

Now, at 41, the Tucson artist is still exploring the questions he had as a young boy and shares them with the public through his art. His works are on display at the Arizona State Museum through Oct. 27 .

Diaz's work is also influenced by Mexican and Northern European artists from the 16th and 17th centuries, and reflects his interest in alchemy.

"They look like paintings that have been taken out of old gothic churches during the Dark Ages," he said.

His paintings have brooding colors and recurring symbols of eyes, moons and hourglasses. Some are macabre scenes, with blood dripping from detached limbs.

All of this combined with Christian themes has left some thinking his work is sacrilegious.

"Some people look at my work and think I'm coming from a negative point of view, that I'm being blasphemous towards the church," he said.

"I'm not. I'm actually coming from a positive way of looking at religious art."

He hopes his art provokes thought.

"When you look at a painting it should bring out emotion so you can reflect on it."

Diaz has established an international reputation, with shows in New York, Los Angeles and, this year, Rome, at the Mondo Bizzarro gallery. He was surprised at his following at the Rome gallery, where he sold out all of his signed books and paintings.

Mondo Bizzarro is the Roman mecca for the art genres Diaz belongs to, the Outsider and Low-Brow movements.

Artists in these genres are self-taught and often aren't taken seriously by prestigious galleries or museums because the work is considered folk art.

But these genres are becoming more popular around the world. That's how Diaz came to create the cover of the 2003 CD by the multiplatinum band P.O.D.

Still, Diaz has not been free of criticism, and at least 85 percent of the Christian bookstores around the country banned the CD because of the image he created.

It consists of a naked woman with butterfly wings; her breasts and pelvis are covered and her knees and ankles are bound. They considered it "a little bit too racy," he said.

"You know, when I did the album cover I didn't even think about any of that. I didn't intentionally do that. I didn't realize they were going to be so uptight about that."

But his art has continued to draw attention. His most recent contract is with the Phoenix-area Arizona Light Rail, which has commissioned him to do a mural.

Locally, he was also the mastermind behind the Hotel Congress stage, and his work is on the walls of Cafe Poca Cosa.

And aside from all this, he has a band with his wife called Blind Divine, where they play "Trip-Hop" music.

Their songs have appeared on MTV, VH1, and History Channel shows, and their particular sound has sometimes been used in documentaries about paranormal subjects.

It was about 12 years ago, before he was a painter, that he found himself repeatedly visiting an exhibit of the Mexican artist Roberto Marquez, at the same place where he is now having his own exhibit.

"I started looking at them up close, and then I kind of started taking them apart in my mind, seeing how the artist created them." Then he went back home and tried to emulate the technique he had just seen, but mixed in the Catholic mysticism.

"I did a painting of the Virgin Mary, hanging by a meat hook, and Jesus was floating in the background, and that was the first painting that I did. Which really, if you look at my paintings now, I'm pretty much doing the same thing."

Diaz might have been self-taught, but the curator at the Arizona State Museum said he has two qualities that are important in any artist:

His art inspiration stems from his own experiences. He doesn't extract inspiration from outside experiences with the objective of impacting the public, said Martin Kim, the curator.

And instead of exposing his opinion about the religious icons, Diaz shares his questions with the public through his paintings.

"It's like being invited into a more intimate part of an artist's life," Kim said. "We can all join him in asking those questions."