ARTIST STATEMENTS
Amber Burns
I am interested in the connections that we make with animals and how their energies are linked with nature and other living things. Growing up, I spent a lot of time helping my family rescue and rehabilitate all types of animals. Both of my parents heavily participated in the Raptor Center and the Como Zoo and instilled in me compassion for animals. I not only developed an appreciation for wildlife, but I also came to understand that humans and animals are connected. Through my work I strive to obtain the personalities and energies that are animated by animals through visual patterns. We often feel a representation of ourselves through animals and make connections with the emotions expressed on the canvas. When viewers see my work, I hope they are inspired to not only appreciate wildlife, but I hope they recognize aspects of their own personality and the relationships they experience.
About the Artist
Amber Burns graduated from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2011 with a BFA in Arts Education and taught visual art at Marshall School until 2018. She is a multidisciplinary artist, and has taught visual art, dance, and theater in the Duluth community at places such as the Duluth Playhouse, MN Ballet, Madill, and many organizations around Duluth. In 2018 she finished her MLS degree in Arts Development and Program Management from the University of Denver and was the Artistic Director for the Duluth Playhouse Community Theater. Currently she is the Community Impact Specialist at the Duluth Superior Community Foundation where she manages youth scholarships. Amber has had several visual arts and performing arts showcases, including at the Zeitgeist Arts Gallery, Meryll Lynch Art Gallery, Duluth Playhouse, Marshall Performing Arts, Fregeau Auditorium, and MN Ballet. She is very passionate about advocating for the arts, youth, and helping the local community.
Kat Corrigan
Painting is an act of meditation and joy for me. It is the negative space around familiar forms that intrigues me- how to properly depict that curve of kinked tail, the twist in an ear, the slant of sunlight on fallen snow. I thrill to take a common subject such as a dog and elevate it to an abstraction of color and light. My work is translating the focus of a soul into brushstrokes, attempting to depict in pigment what is written in an eye.
About the Artist
Kat Corrigan is an award-winning Minneapolis artist whose work is widely collected in the United States as well as Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Japan, Lebanon and Costa Rica. She has studied and worked with Bela Petheo, Elizabeth Erickson, Hazel Belvoe, Carol Marine, Liz Sivertson, and Dreama Tolle-Perry among other recognized American painters. She spends a week every spring at the Grand Marais Art Colony for reinspiration, and teaches there in the summer. Kat is also a recognized and sought after acrylic painting teacher and she offers Painting Lessons from her studio in the Ivy Building in South Minneapolis and online. Kat is committed to the concept of A Painting A Day and posts a daily blog detailing her work (www.katcorrigan.blogspot.com). She shows in area art fairs and galleries and is always happy to work with clients on commissions.
Diamond Knispel
My work is about love, healing, and connection. I started life in a home where love was withheld and the next meal was unknown. As a child I found hope in my imagination and connection through creation. I grew up in the woods and I identified with the wild creatures and tangling plants that surrounded me. Through the years my love for them has only grown. I use acrylic paint to create bold, kaleidoscopic, postmodern-narrative paintings of flora and fauna nestled in dreamlike worlds. Aware that we are just one part of this sentient wild world I use my paint brush to explore it all. I capture attention on behalf of the featured biodiversity using bright and happy imagery because I believe that humans are more likely to hear difficult truths if they’re said through charming compositions. I make and share my art with the hope that it will spark conversations about all things including difficult truths. I've found my work does just that and as such creates connections between me, my wild subjects, and other humans.
About the Artist
Diamond is an acrylic painter and writer located in the northwoods of Minnesota. An artist and explorer at heart, Diamond has been making a career as an artist for more than a decade with both her personal work and employment and residencies at art organizations around Northern Minnesota. She has taught art to folks of all ages and abilities since 2012. In the fall of 2014 Diamond took her art on the road as she embarked on an 8 month solo, motorcycle trip around the western half of the U.S. She found her way back to northern Minnesota where she laid down roots and built a home-studio with her husband, Cassidy. In 2022 Diamond was awarded an Individual Artist Grant from Region 2 Arts Council to tour Minnesota galleries with her body of work featuring the flora and fauna of Minnesota entitled Wild Whimsy of the Northwoods. Diamond currently lives in her home-studio with her husband, Cassidy, and beloved cat, Lady Gray. They live in a patch of Minnesota forest surrounded by their squirrel and fox neighbors. Still an avid explorer, Diamond continues to explore the wild world on foot and in paint.