About

About Désirée Paus Sterling

The Artist

My name is Désirée Paus Sterling, and I am an emerging fine artist based in San Diego, California. My creative journey began at the age of 12, when my mother took me by the hand and led me into my first oil painting class in Spain. That first encounter with oil and canvas left me completely enthralled — captivated by the way color, light, and shadow could conjure an entire world. I painted a few pieces in my early teens, but life took me in other directions, and it wasn't until the pandemic that I returned to painting with full intention and devotion.

I love creating pieces that interpret form through vibrant colors and bold contrast between light and dark — I also love works that carry a certain serenity and calm within them. My style has a realistic flair, peppered with abstract and impressionist elements, always in service of something deeper than the image itself.

Art as Healing

For 20 to 25 years, I have practiced service and healing through acupuncture and massage therapy. In recent years, I have delved deeply into an ancient Vedic energy healing tradition — one that has profoundly changed the way I see the world around me, and myself.

That transformation lives in every painting I create. The Vedic tradition I practice is mantra-rich, and mantra meditation and japa are among its most sacred practices. When I paint, I chant mantras to imbue each piece with a specific healing energy — channeled intentionally into the work. The vibrations of each painting radiate outward, blessing the living space it inhabits and uplifting the soul of all who encounter it.

My art is not simply decorative. It is an offering.

A Legacy of Art — Three Generations

Art has always run through my family like a quiet, unbroken thread.

My maternal grandfather, Rolf Garman Reinert-Larsen (1901–1998), was a Norwegian engineer and artist whose extraordinary ink drawings reveal a man of rare precision and sensitivity. Born in Oslo and employed at Standard Telefon og Kabelfabrik A/S — the Norwegian subsidiary of ITT — he moved between the worlds of engineering and art with equal grace. In 1926, at just 25 years of age, he drew two Art Deco masterpieces in ink — works of extraordinary crosshatching and stippling that capture the elegance and optimism of 1920s Oslo. In November 1926, he drew Trondheim Domkirke — Nidaros Cathedral — one of the most beloved landmarks in all of Norway, reaching for something ancient and unshakeable in a world still finding its footing after the First World War.

Rolf signed his early works "R-L" — the initials of Reinert-Larsen, a name he later changed to Tribler. And so his daughter became Isabel Tribler. And his granddaughter — born Marie-Belle Désirée Archila Tribler — became, in time, Désirée Paus Sterling.

Three names. Three generations. One unbroken love of art.

In Honor of Isabel Tribler

Every time I paint, I think of my mother, Isabel Josefina Maria Elisabeth Arias Tribler (1938–2020). She passed away just before the pandemic, and her memory is woven into everything I create. It was she who first placed a brush in my hand and opened the door to this world.

When my mother retired, she blossomed into a gifted painter in both oils and watercolors. Her enthusiasm for art — and for my own creative work — was a quiet, steady force that shaped who I am as an artist. My creative journey exists in large part because of her.

Everything I create is in her honor and recognition. The Isabel Tribler Collection on this site is a tribute to her talent, her spirit, and her enduring love.