Meet Artist of the Month Diana Vasquez Kalajdzic

This month, I am featuring an artist whose art I have admired for a long time. I’ve followed her career since I met her in college. Diana Vasquez Kalajdzic is a North Carolina artist who works with watercolors and digital tools to create surreal and magical scenes, like out of a story book!

You can follow Diana Vasquez Kalajdzic on IG: @dianavkal and email her if you’re interested in purchasing any of her work listed here at vkaldiana@gmail.com

Let’s learn more about her and her work through my interview questions below. Enjoy and if you have any questions or know an artist who would like to be featured in my upcoming Artist of the month segment please send me a message!

Carolina: What is your cultural background?
Diana: Full Ecuadorian; I was born in the City of Quito on 1989. I permanently moved to the US in
2008.
Carolina: What inspires your art?
Diana: There are many things that have played a role in my style but I think what they all have in
common is how much they ignite me emotionally and how they push me to dig deeper
within myself.
• Andean folkloric music: It is the sound of the mountains I often visited growing up,
the little villages, the colors, the animals.
• Nature: more specifically I really enjoy painting birds, and water. I love observing
color combinations and patterns in trees or gradients in the sky that I might apply in
my work.
• Classical music: because I believe it evokes the power of nature.
• Book illustration and manga: the details and composition are great learning tools.
• I appreciate most music genres but feel more touched by older Latin American
genres. In addition there are quite a few women singers that have marked my style;
I am very dawn to female voices because they have this enchanting quality, like real
life mermaid spirits.
• The ocean: I feel soothed by its sound and movement, yet overwhelmed by its
immensity that blends with the horizon. Makes me feel something similar to when I
am deeply immersed in the creative process of making art.
• Dreams and fantasy: because they are languages of the soul.
Carolina: What are your hobbies outside of art?
Diana: I really enjoy being outside in my garden, listening, observing the details… just being
outside. Also, I absolutely love movie night with my kiddos.