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Award-winning collage artist and children’s author and illustrator, Dar Hosta, grew up in Wisconsin and Missouri. As the daughter of an artist, Hosta’s childhood was one in which creativity was happening all the time. Dar Hosta holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a secondary teaching certification in language arts from Cleveland State University, while her work in fine art and design has been lifelong and self-taught. After a move to central New Jersey in 1999, and the birth of her first son, she remained at home to raise her children, during which time her career in the visual arts began to grow. The common threads in her art have always been its bright colors, simple folksy style and appeal to the young and the young at heart.

Hosta creates her vibrant collages by painting sheets of Japanese paper, or “washi,” with acrylic paints and unique tools and brushes. She then arranges the cut pieces, and adheres them with a dry-glue method onto watercolor paper that she has also painted with acrylics. The collages are often meticulously enhanced with oil pastels, colored pencil, metal powders and metallic inks. Intricate collages can represent up to one hundred hours of work. As a fairytale and folklore enthusiast, Hosta is similarly influenced by nature motifs and universal symbolism, and this is reflected in her art.

Hosta has gained regional recognition in the mid Atlantic area for her colorful, whimsical collages, and in 2003, in a project that combined her love of creative writing and her passion for visual art, she completed her first picture book for children, I Love The Night. Conceived as a bedtime story, I Love The Night, is a gentle narrative dedicated to nocturnal animals, and is the winner of the 2004 Teachers’ Choice Award for the Family, and a 2004 Borders Original Voices Selection. Her second book, I Love The Alphabet, 2004, received the 2005 Teachers’ Choice for Children’s Books and the 2005 Benjamin Franklin Award for Picture Books. Both books were selected for Children’s Book of the Month Club featured member’s selection in May, 2006 and now number over 40,000 copies in print collectively. Hosta’s third title, Mavis and Her Marvelous Mooncakes, was released in December 2006, followed by If I Were A Tree, in May 2007, which received the 2008 Teachers’ Choice Award for Children’s Books, and the 2008 National Arbor Day Foundation’s Media Award.

Hosta exhibits in regional juried art shows and visits schools where she presents to children, parents and teachers as an author/illustrator/educator, and has been working with children in educational settings since 1992. Dar’s collages, prints and books belong to homes in all corners of the world. To view Dar’s art, exhibition calendar, and for book and presentation information, visit www.darhosta.com.


Dar Hosta lives with her husband, her two sons, and two big dogs in a little house on a sunny hillside.

Award-winning collage artist and children’s author and illustrator, Dar Hosta, grew up in Wisconsin and Missouri. As the daughter of an artist, Hosta’s childhood was one in which creativity was happening all the time. Dar Hosta holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a secondary teaching certification in language arts from Cleveland State University, whil... More