Page 84 - March 2022 catalog

Diana Stetson
Diana Stetson grew up in the fields and the woods of the Hudson River Valley, discovering the nurturing power of nature, and the limitless world of imagination. Her home was a remarkable stone house, originally part of an extensive Hindu spiritual community led by Om the Omnipotent. It had a twelve-foot-long Sanskrit blessing carved into the beam over the fireplace and Eternal Life symbols carved at the intersection of all of the beams used to construct the house that was modeled after an upturned hull of a sailing ship. The house and the natural world around it had a spiritual quality that deeply influenced the young artist’s experience of life.
Stetson earned a degree in Biology at Reed College, while spending most of her time in the calligraphy studio with her first mentor, Robert Palladino, a Benedictine monk who worked intensively with her for four years. Palladino awarded her the rare Reed AA, which depicted exceptional talent and achievement. During these years, her other art mentor was her Botany advisor, Dr. Bert Brehm. She kept a lifelong relationship with both mentors because of her deep sense of the importance of those early influences.
On a shared scholarship, Stetson spent more than a year in Asia after graduating, studying Japanese and Chinese brushwork. She lived in both a remote village in the Japanese Alps learning the farming and spiritual traditions of pre-war Japan, and on the island of Cheung Chau outside of Hong Kong while studying with the prominent Chinese calligrapher, Jat See Yeu. Stetson’s aesthetic foundation formed during this time was deeply Asian, and that has expressed itself in her work for decades. An early love for travel and adventure took her around the world over the next decade. A strong kinship felt with Greek people inspired her to study and teach Greek dance and drew her back for many years to the same village on the island of Naxos.
To continue her studies in drawing, painting, binding and the lettering arts, Stetson did her graduate work at the Roehampton Institute in London, where she worked intensively, completing a two-year Diploma with honors in one year. She was the only student that year granted access to manuscripts and books at the British Library. The many years of rigorous study and practice with the finest and subtlest aspects of letterform had awarded her with excellent eye/hand coordination.
Stetson has received over 40 grants and awards for her work, including a grant from the French Ministry of Culture in Paris, First Place at the prestigious Saint Louis Art Fair, and the coveted Bravo Award for Excellence in Visual Art in 2003, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Several of the grants have resulted in public art installations in New Mexico. Her work resides in many fine collections around the world, and has been included in museum exhibitions and collections, including Le Musée en Herbes in Paris; the Fine Art Museum in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; Albuquerque Museum, and Museum of Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM.
In 2012, Stetson was invited by the US State Department to be a member of the delegation of US artists, scholars, and musicians to represent the United States at the first US Culture Days in Turkmenistan. During this event, she gave a presentation at the National Academy of Art, opened a retrospective exhibition at the Fine Art Museum in Ashgabat, taught a Master Class, and met with US Ambassador Patterson as well as several prominent Turkmen painters and jewelers. In 2014, Stetson returned to Turkmenistan on invitation from the State Department to curate and install the first exhibition of paintings by Turkmen and US painters, at the Museum of Fine Art in Ashgabat. On that trip Stetson continued her work with art students, introducing them to oil pastels in several workshops and a Master Class. She hopes to continue working as a cultural ambassador for the US in other countries in the future, with the belief that art is a powerful bridge between cultures and peoples.