Art

Item Description

Framed signed and numbered 15/18.  25" H x 14.25" wide in frame.

About this piece:

 This linocut is from a series of twelve, one for each month. This is the artwork for the month of May.

I have always felt such gratitude for the peace and strength and inspiration that the natural world has extended to me.  The kinds of losses that are now being contemplated because of global warming have been almost too much to bear.

 I’ve thought of changing my career, dedicating the rest of my life to environmental work.  But in the end, it seems, we all have to do the work we are called to do, and hope that it is the most important or useful contribution that we can make.

What came to me was an urge to make a body of work that might remind us all of the importance and beauty of nature. The project evolved, and I started writing haiku poems, taking artistic license with the definition of haiku.   I would choose one poem per month to use in a block print.  Because of my training in and affinity for Asian text, I would include Chinese and Japanese seals or characters in each block for graphic purposes as well as for content. I would make two “states” of the editions – one simply black on white, and one in color.

The process has been enlivening.  It has reminded me to keep my eyes and heart open more during each day, in the garden, on a walk, driving past a field, and sometimes in the middle of the night.

Alice Walker wrote that artists are simply messengers, on whom fall the responsibility for uniting the world.  For my part, I do feel an obligation to look deeply towards what seems important in life, and to make an attempt at expressing it in art for others, in hopes of helping to move things in the right direction.  I hope that in some small way I have been able to do that with this project. 

My goals?  To move someone. 

To inspire someone to be an advocate for our beloved planet in their own way. 

About Diana Stetson - (Please click on the link below to see her other work.)

Award-winning New Mexican painter Diana Stetson works at Hand Graphics in Santa Fe on monotypes, and in her studio in Alameda, New Mexico on mixed media paintings.  The years that she spent working as a monotype artist inform the new body of work that she is producing in mixed media on large birch panels.  Her work incorporates lyrical images of animals, birds, butterflies, flora and women as she strives to express the deep connection between humans and the natural world around them.  Stetson is currently engaged in exploring ways to impact environmental issues as a visual storyteller.

Stetson has received over 20 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 2003 Bravo Award for Excellence in Visual Art with three other collaborating artists.  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 several museum exhibitions including Le Musée en Herbes in Paris; the Fine Art Museum in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; Albuquerque Art Museum, and Santa Fe New Mexico Museum of Art.  Her degrees are from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and Roehampton Institute in London. 

Recently Stetson was invited by the State Department to represent US artists as cultural liaison at US Culture Days in Turkmenistan.  The honor of being invited as cultural liaison came with the opportunity to work with the US Embassy, to teach at the National Academy of Art, and to have a small retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Fine Art in Ashgabat.

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