Page 68 - ARTEMIS FINE ART GALLERY LA JOLLA - OCTOBER 2021

“I paint because I am in love with this Earth.
I write poetry when it’s too dark to paint.
Paintings and poetry become intimate with each other. And together they tell the Stories that come
from mythic memory
and a childhood spent in the woods.”
Diana Stetson
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. One of her best friends was her next-door neighbor, Mr. Sanderson, a dapper 80-year-old yoga teacher who still stood on his head and described what it was like to visit the moon. Beauty, magic and freedom in nature were her realities for the first twelve years of life, and her work as an artist draws heavily on this unusual and entrancing childhood.
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.
Stetson has received over 40 grants and awards for her work. It resides in many fine collections around the world. Museum exhibitions have included Le Musée en Herbes and Galerie de la Halle Saint-Pierre in Paris; Museum of Fine Art in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan; NM Museum in Santa Fe, NM; Albuquerque Museum in Albuquerque, NM; Portland Art Museum in Portland, OR. One of her large works was chosen in 2018 to be added to City of Albuquerque Public Art Collection.