Dianna Cates Dunn » Blog

1939 ......

Pre-war America....

Land of opportunity and freedom ....

Skiing in the Watsatch Mountains of Utah before ski lifts and sunscreen were thought necessary.

My mother, Ingrid Mjaatvedt Cates (1922-1979) ....

Before she was my mother, posing for a photo taken by my Uncle, Frank Mjaatvedt

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I loved my 'moma' and I am a second generation Norwegian American because of her. As pretty as Ingrid Bergman, the Ingrid I knew as moma was an intelligent, proud, hard-working, determined women who fiercely loved and cared for her four daughters. (No sons....sorry, Dad) I am the youngest of those four daughters and I may well be the one she worried the most about because, as it turns out, I may well have been the daughter most like her. But I digress.....

As an artist (one of my choices that worried my mother the most!), I am not only able to but am blessed by the ability to capture, interpret and share abstract ideas and feelings along with life-like images. Over the past many days while working on "I Remember Moma", I have discovered the incredible sense of time travel that has not only connected me to the people and places of my past but made me ever so aware how the past flows into and forms my present. Though both passed away years ago, my mother and her brother...my wonderful Uncle Frank... have been palpably present in my studio. A pretty constant dialogue flowed between myself and one or the other of them and, there were a few times, I had to put down my brush and allow them center stage to recount small moments in time that seem now to define their characters. I won't begin to try and relay the content of these moments, but suffice it to say, it has been a personal experience that I have thoroughly enjoyed. And, no, I don't think anyone need call in the men with the little white jacket for me.  (Soon, maybe, but not quite yet!)

A fellow artist friend quickly observed that this painting is a departure from both my inclination for abstracts and my usual color palette. And it is. But it is not at all foreign to me. Some artists may paint sequentially with one style following on the heals of another, but I do not. Ideas for paintings present themselves to me much like random acts of kindnesses do....by surprise. Following through with those ideas is just what I do.  I believe it is a part of me rooted in my heritage.