Artist Statement

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

My work is about love, healing and connection. My childhood was set against the backdrop of a swampy forest. As a child I identified with the raw wild world, tenacious creatures, and tangling plants that surrounded me. For me, home was not a comfortable place. Exploring the woods gave me freedom and the faith that one day life could get better than what I had. I found hope in my imagination and connection through creation. Over the years, my creative journey has brought me back to the wild world as I have turned to painting to heal my inner child. I use acrylic paint to create bold, kaleidoscopic, postmodern-narrative paintings of flora and fauna nestled in dreamlike worlds. Aware that we are just one, tiny part of our sentient wild world I use my paint brush to explore it all as I create odes to the wildness that saved me.

I believe in the power of communication so I make my paintings loud in order to give voice to the wild world. My work is also dreamy, fairy tale-like, filled with whimsy and personality making my creatures endearing. My vibrant characters reflect the rich lives that their real-world counterparts lead. Despite the hardships that human choices may have created for these critters they are defiant in their cheeriness. I use bright, hopeful, imagery to tell the stories of thefeatured biodiversity because I believe that hope is the first spark for change. I pair my paintings with personal writings that feel like a love letter to the subject and audience. I call these narratives “chapters.” The chapters are meant to explain and deepen the connections. They contain the stories of the subjects and my personal musings that go with the work. I believe communicating about the real stuff is how we create solutions and healing, so I aim to inspire real conversations with my work. I’ve found my work does just that and as such creates connections between me, my wild subjects, and other humans.

Artist Bio

Diamond is an acrylic painter and writer located in the northwoods of Minnesota. Her work features flora and fauna in bright, lush, 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 pollinators as a way to give voice to the wild world. Her postmodern-narrative art 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. She has taught art to folks of all ages and abilities since 2012. In the fall of 2014 Diamond took her art on the road as she embarked on an 8 month, solo, motorcycle trip around the western half of the U.S. She found her way back to northern Minnesota where she laid down roots and built a home-studio ­with her husband, Cassidy. In 2022 Diamond was awarded an Individual Artist Grant from Region 2 Arts Council to tour Minnesota galleries with her body of work featuring the flora and fauna of Minnesota entitled Wild Whimsy of the Northwoods.

Diamond currently lives in her home-studio with her husband, Cassidy. They live in a patch of Minnesota forest surrounded by their squirrel and fox neighbors. Diamond is working on her latest body of work featuring extinct and endangered species entitled A Quest to Embrace the Fantastical Cosmos. Still an avid explorer, Diamond continues to explore the wild world on foot and in paint.