Jan Norsetter

Artist Statement

Artist Jan Norsetter is an award-winning oil painter known for vibrant landscape paintings en
plein air and evocatively painted studies in still life. Norsetter also practices the decorative art of
rosemaling, using skill and an artist’s sensibility to embellish items traditional and modern in an
age-old form.

Norsetter sets up her easel en plein air, working outdoors surrounded by a world that imbues
her paintings with a sense of place. Her landscapes capture exact but imaginative views of
countryside in every season—close to home in Wisconsin and on travels that have taken the
artist to many places in the United States, and abroad in Italy, Ireland, France, Scotland and
Norway. She often uses blog posts to record progress on a series of paintings and impressions of
a particular location.

In the past 12 years, Norsetter has exhibited in more than 40 juried, collaborative or solo
art shows. Commissions include the Tribune Building Artist of Record, Wisconsin Rapids,
Wisconsin, a series of paintings scheduled for completion in 2020. Selected paintings, prints and
Norsetter’s rosemaling are in permanent collections at many museums and cultural institutions,
including the Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, Illinois; Chazen Museum in Madison, Wisconsin;
the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin; and Livsriese, the Norwegian
heritage center in Stoughton, Wisconsin. Many examples of her work also reside in private
collections across the country and Europe.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, including top honors at the Theodore Robinson Plein
Air Competition in 2013, 2014 and 2016, First Place and Best in Show at the Wisconsin State
Rosemaling Exhibit in 2014, and First Place in the National Exhibition of Folk Art in the
Norwegian Tradition at the Vesterheim Museum, Decorah, Iowa, in 2009. Having won one of the
top awards at the Cedarburg Plein Air Competition in 2018, Norsetter was one of three judges for
the 2019 competition.

Norsetter holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in fine arts and art education,
(BS, MA, MFA). In 2018 she was awarded the Vesterheim Gold Medal in Rosemaling. In
addition to her work as an artist, she teaches landscape painting and rosemaling. Norsetter
continues to draw inspiration from respected mentors in oil painting and rosemaling through
formal and informal opportunities to learn and improve her craft.