Chris Wold Dyrud grew up in an Air Force family, visually inspired by the variety of new places and people. After majoring in art at Penn State, she spent a year in Moscow, USSR, teaching art in the Anglo-American School. Her Norwegian roots brought her back to settle in the Minneapolis area, where she and her husband raised their two children and an assortment of pets.

Chris has continued to explore other cultures in her thirty years of free-lance illustration assignments, while doing the research close to home. Using traditional media, her goal is to portray the individuality of people, especially children, and to convey their emotions and interactions. Her illustrations give the viewer a sense that the image is a slice of a bigger story.