Artist Statement

My name is Diamond and I am an artist and storyteller from the Northwoods of Minnesota.

Always surrounded by the wild world I use my paint brush to explore it all. I create narrative pop-surreal pieces with acrylic paint on canvas that focus on flora and fauna in high-contrast, high-color, scenes. I think of each painting as a sort of orchestrated music piece, and like my favorite music I want each piece to have depth and twists around every corner so I create many layers and tune every detail.

I use my deeply saturated and layered worlds as meditation, imbuing them with moments and reflections from my daily life as I work through life’s hurdles. The subject is often chosen based on how I feel their characteristics reflect my feelings, but even as I focus on my own life I also focus on the complex stories of the flora and fauna in the scenes. I hope that by telling my stories through the flora and fauna that my work will leave viewers contemplating the beauty that we are surrounded by; inspiring humans to look closer and step softer in our lively wild world.

Artist Bio

Diamond is an acrylic painter located in the Northwoods of Minnesota. Her work features flora and fauna in bright, saturated scenes. She uses her work to explore and work through the emotions of daily life, using each painting to zoom in on a particular critter nestled among botanicals and butterflies as a way to give voice to the wild world. A mix of surreal and whimsical, her work is most aptly described as magical realism. Through her bright paintings of lush worlds Diamond aims to make the viewer more curious about the wild world that often goes unnoticed. She says “I want folks to walk away thinking a little bit more about the wild world that surrounds us; to pause and consider cause and effect, and the reciprocal nature of everything.”

An artist and explorer at heart, Diamond has been making a career as an artist for more than a decade with both her personal work and employment and residencies at art organizations around Northern Minnesota. Diamond has been selling art and creating commissions since 2011. She began teaching art in 2012, and has been teaching to people of all ages and abilities ever since. In 2013 she received two residencies in Grand Rapids (MN) – one at MacRostie Art Center and the other at Old Central School. Diamond took her art on the road in the fall of 2014 when she took an 8 month, solo, motorcycle trip around the western half of the United States. She came back to Northern Minnesota in the spring of 2015 and decided to put down roots when she met her (now) husband, Cassidy. She recently received an Individual Artist Grant from Region 2 Arts Council to take her latest body of work, Wild Whimsy of the Northwoods, across the state of MN.

Diamond currently lives in the Laporte (MN) area with her husband and beloved cat, Lady Gray. They live in a patch of forest surrounded by their squirrel and fox neighbors in their as-of-yet unfinished home studio that the duo began constructing together in 2016. Still an avid explorer, Diamond try’s to spend as much time as she can in the Northwoods forests, letting the adventures inform her work.