An experimenter of mixed media, Diane had spent many years oil painting in a storytelling style. Her images depicted a life as an evolving woman/artist, stories told and retold by other historical and contemporary peers. At the University of Minnesota/Duluth her work became more 3D and textural as a result of hand built and figurative ceramic classes. Her techniques got tested and expanded over the years as a K-12 and private art teacher.

After her years growing up on an Iowa farm and the Northern Woods of Minnesota, her interest in the environment began to take a more dominant role.  In 1994 she moved to Arizona and this new found intriguing landscape piqued her interest. The organic weathered pods and seeds got her involved in a series based on the efforts of the World Seed Banks saving the native seeds from extinction. This rekindled her childhood memories on the family farm; the seasonal seed planting ritual in the rich black earth; her mother’s garden (and later her own) where the seeds were planted, nourished and harvested for the winter food supply.

 The Seed Project series also got her involved with bees wax, encaustic, as a medium.  It fits so well with her project as a natural earthy substance and also draws attention to the plight of the endangered pollinating bees. Diane continues combining her environmental works from an historical woman’s point of view: as gatherers, planters and protectors of the seeds.  Her Pod Goddess series are symbols for the care and reverence of the earth’s seeds.

She works out of her Mountain Studio in Tucson, AZ, the tenth studio that she has occupied, taught and evolved in since her first one on an Iowa farm at the age of 12. “Imaginer, idealist, romanticist, enthusiast, rain-bow chaser.  Diane’s work reaches out and touches each of us in infinite ways.”