Montana native Cherie Roshau already had a passion for art by the time she arrived on the Dickinson State campus. By the time she left in 1972, it had become a lifelong love affair that continues to this day.
“I knew what I wanted to do, but I had no idea where it would take me. You just have to expect the wonderful surprises in your life,” said Roshau, a lifelong artist and vice president of the new Southwest Art Gallery and Science Center in Dickinson."
Roshau earned elementary education and art education degrees at Dickinson State then spent the next 47 years teaching art in Dickinson – mostly at Trinity High School – and other area schools. “I believe everyone is an artist in some shape or form, that we were all born with an innate desire to create, sometimes it’s fed and sometimes it isn’t. Art is an unspoken universal language.”
The lessons Roshau learned at Dickinson State have carried over to an artistic creative and educational career that spans more than 50 years, and even after leaving the teaching profession, she continues to share the passion that first appeared many decades ago in Wibaux County.
“It’s just been a desire to do it. I am now offering a therapeutic art experience at Heartview Foundation in Dickinson. I really have come to enjoy this,” Roshau said. “And I do private lessons in my studio, but the biggest thing taking my time is getting the Southwest Art Gallery and Science Center going. We are in the baby stages of getting it going. We want to do (events) and offer art as a healing process for people immersed in their own grief. We want to work on the diversity of the cultures we have in our area now.”
Roshau and her husband, Ken '89, live in Dickinson where they continue to be regulars at Blue Hawk athletic events and other community events. Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited all over the country, including the Capital Gallery, Lincoln Art Gallery, the Palm Desert Coachella Valley Watercolor Society, Bismarck Art Gallery Association, and Badlands Art Association.
Roshau was commissioned by the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame to create a painting that showcases three North Dakota national rodeo champions: Alvin Nelson, Brad Gjermundson and Wayne Herman and her Theodore Roosevelt Presidential painting and Colonel and Cowboy Teddy are on loan to the DSU Heritage Foundation.
“I continue to challenge myself in capturing the expressions and essence of the subject,” Roshau said. “If a person views my art and comes away with a sense of delight, wonder or a smile, I have achieved my goal as an artist in a world that tends to be chaotic and uncertain.”
Go to https://www.cherieroshau.art/ to find more information about Cherie and her artwork.
By Scooter Pursley
DSU Heritage Foundation Communication Specialist
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