Diane Schroeder majored in art with a strong focus in interior design at the University of Nebraska. After graduating with a BFA, Diane chose a career in the design field, but she never abandoned her love for her art. Whether it was three-dimensional art interpreted from clients desires or 2 dimensional painting exploring abstractions interpreted from subtle adventures, both seem to influence each other.Since her early adult years of painting, Diane has moved from a formal application of oil on canvas to a spontaneous pallet of oil and mixed media. Her pieces abstractly suggest landscape shapes and textures and the translucencies and reflections of atmospheric colors. With the exploration of contrast and contradiction, Diane introduced collage as an exciting additional dimension to her work and she continues to define and refine detail and strength.While Diane enjoyed a long, successful interior design career for national and international commercial interior architectural firms, she was represented by a Chicago gallery for some time and continued to build her painting career under the signature, D.Schumacher. In 2007, Diane made a decision to leave the commercial design profession to focus on her art. Her artist signature is now D.Schroeder.Her work can be found in the collections of major corporations and private residences and she is represented by LaFontsee Galleries in Grand Rapids, MI. She was included in the juried exhibit of American Women Artists in 2011 and recently published in an international volume featuring 15 artists: Pubblicazione XX Secolo/1 by Domenico Amoroso and Sylvia Franchi. and was chosen to exhibit in Klakenfurt, Austria along with 14 other international women artists in 2013 which moved on to the MACC- Museo d'Arte Contemporanea in Caltagorone, Italy in 2013 where her work remains in the permanent collection."The sensation of emotion, the power of intuition and the confidence of logic.It has been my experience that life is a subtle composition of contradictions. And it is only by contrast of the absurd that rational makes sense and it is by the contrast of dark that there is light. The expression of the observations of life have evolved into several varieties of works, while expressing a consistency that nearly always reveals the suggestion of landscapes and the motion within a landscape experience.The contradiction that oil and water do not mix and the theory that spilled oil is not easily controlled - is the very basis of my working media. It is because "oil and water do not mix" that I find oil base media the perfect application with paper. I am in control of the applied materials rather than the properties of the paper demanding an opinion on the control and, ultimately, the result.While there are highs contrasted by low periods of life, there are subtleties of monochromatic colors contrasted by shiny and dull, transparent and opaque, rough and smooth, undefined shapes and defined shapes or lines - to form an overall composition in an undisturbed space of time; not always recognized at the moment of happening - but leaves a lasting impression to be continually reinterpreted and related. Even with high contrast, subtleties are woven into the overall picture as the observation continues. The collage elements are saved pieces of my life but placed into another context to create a new experience. The mixed media of pencil, cray-pas, charcoal, metallic ink, cold leaf and foil are the results of further exploration of materials that should not work together - but do.Fear is contrasted by knowledge. Knowledge is gained by exploration."- Diane Schroeder