Utah lost one of its accomplished artists Wednesday, an artist who worked in numerous styles and mediums, an artist who was known for her supportive and giving nature, an artist named Norma Shurtliff Forsberg.
"Clear up to the end," said fellow artist and good friend Nancy Lund, "all she worried about was getting her paintings into the Bountiful/Davis Art Center's Christmas Show and to the Tivoli Gallery."
One of the last things Forsberg said to Lund was, "Are my paintings taken care of?"
Forsberg was born March 8, 1920, and grew up in Utah under the artful and encouraging eye of her artist father, Wilford H. ("Hack") Shurtliff.
Receiving her art education at the University of Utah and the Salt Lake and Bountiful/Davis Art Centers, Forsberg was ever the experimenter, as much at home with realism as she was with abstraction.
In their book "Artists of Utah," authors Bob Olpin, Bill Seifrit and Vern Swanson said: "This gifted painter of the Utah landscape (in oil, watercolor, acrylic and other media) is particularly fine as the creator of handsome pastoral designs."
Forsberg's passion for "finding beauty in the common" was what endeared her to people and art patrons alike.
"We'd go to workshops together up in Montana to paint and photograph," said artist Shirley McKay, another of Forsberg's good friends. "Anytime I was with her it was always the most delightful time you could imagine. It was because of her optimistic and positive view of life, the ability to see humor in everything."
McKay remembers a time in Forsberg's studio when both women were painting with their easels back to back so neither could see what the other painted. "When we both finished she turned around, looked at my work and said, 'Oh you little stink. You've got such a great painting there.' She was always so supportive."
Forsberg battled cancer for many years, yet managed to remain busy at her art until the end. She was a member of the Intermountain Society of Artists, and her paintings will still be on display at the Tivoli and Repartee Galleries.
"With her art, Norma was very sharing, very giving," said Lund. "She shared herself with everyone."
She will be missed.