By Karen Spotts
When you step into Diane Edwards’ home, you feel like you’ve arrived at a museum. You are surrounded by art of all kinds, particularly Norwegian arts and crafts, as well as walls full of oil and pastel paintings. Once down in her studio, the abundance continues…added to her own work, are the paintings on easels of the students she is instructing. Art is everywhere, as well as books, still life set-ups and award ribbons hanging from the center beam. In this creative space, I interviewed Diane for this article.
Diane isn’t new to art; she knew she wanted to be an art teacher since she was seven years old, wandering in and around the prairies of western North Dakota, where she was born. Her parents were descendants of Norwegian immigrants; her grandparents all spoke Norwegian. Diane was raised in a Norwegian farming community, having lots of freedom to discover and explore the landscape and nearby Badlands, the environment that richly influenced her ‘tonalist’ style. (Tonalist paintings are somewhat close in values, and show a lot of atmosphere and mood). The “landscape” has always been a major part of her life.
She married her husband Dale in 1972; she and their two children moved to Colorado in 1989, first to Alamosa for 10 years, and then to Ft. Collins where she fell in love with painting ‘in plein air’ the surrounding mountains, rivers, rocks and trees. One of her favorite places to paint is the Cache La Poudre River, inspiring Diane and a friend to start the “Paint the Poudre Plein Air” event that ran for several years.
Teaching is in Diane’s blood. After teaching Junior High and High School, she obtained her Master’s Degree in Art and Education, and taught at the college level. Diane has taught workshops and classes in 17 States and Canada. Although now retired, she still teaches workshops in her home studio. When not teaching, Diane and Dale travel; mostly to western Europe and Scandinavia. Diane paints not only in oil and pastel, but started Norwegian Rosemaling in 1975. Rosemaling is a traditional Norwegian folk art of decorative painting. She has written ten books on Scandinavian folk art painting, traveling to Sweden and Norway for her research. She has also written Painting Landscapes of Colorado and the West, a book on painting basics for both beginner and advanced painters in oil and pastel. Diane likes to say “Creating art makes all the problems of life go away.”
Diane has been fortunate to study with many wonderful teachers, including Lorenzo Chavez, Richard McKinley and Stephen Quiller. She began focusing on pastels in 2000, and achieved Master Signature Status in the Pastel Society of Colorado in 2013. She still enters PSC shows as well as many others in the region, such as the Western Spirit Show in Cheyenne. Diane has work displayed in many private collections, and places such as the Medical Center of the Rockies, Kaiser Permanente Clinics in northern Colorado, and U.S. Senator Michael Bennet’s office. She has completed murals in restaurants and motels, and completed private commissioned pieces as well. You can see her work at the Sons of Norway Lodge in Lakewood, November 1st and 2nd. She will also have her studio included in the Ft. Collins Open Studio Tour, and her work was recently in a show in Ft. Collins at 3 Square Art.
I personally wish to thank Diane for all the help she’s given me as Signature Chairperson, a position she held for 11 years!
The painting she is holding in the photo is of her Dad, who is “Rolling Up the Barbed Wire” where he raised Herefords in North Dakota until his retirement in 1985.
To see more of Diane’s work, go to:
