Denise Walser-Kolar
b. 1960, Grand Forks, ND
Denise Walser-Kolar earned her Bachelor's Degree in Graphic Design and Commercial Illustration from the College of Visual Arts in Saint Paul, Minnesota. After graduating from college, she worked in the Graphics Department at Mayo Clinic for nearly ten years before starting her own graphic design business. She began taking classes at the Minnesota School of Botanical Art in 2003 and started teaching botanical art in 2006.
Her work has been exhibited at the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis, Filoli in Woodside, California, Huntington Gardens, the 11th & 12th Annual International Juried Botanical Art Exhibitions presented by The American Society of Botanical Artists and The Horticultural Society of New York, Focus on Nature XI at the New York State Museum and the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. In 2011, she was awarded a Silver-Gilt Medal by the Royal Horticultural Society in London for her series of paintings of The Hybrid Hazelnuts of Badgersett Research Farm. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation.