Clear is my real name.The name was translated to English in the 19th century by my great-great grandfather, a descendent of Europeans who immigrated to the United States before the American Revolution. I was born in 1939 in a farmhouse near Elmdale, Minnesota, USA, in a beautiful countryside of lakes, hills & trees. The name Deanna was chosen mysteriously, my mother, herself, telling me she didn’t know why, but knew before I was born that was to be my name. When I was 6 years old we moved to Minneapolis, & I deeply missed the freedom of the country. I attended Catholic schools & then the University of Minnesota. At age 21 I moved to Los Angeles, California, to join the man I was to marry. I was a homemaker & a mother for 17 years, but I was restless. I knew there was something creative I was destined to do, but that something seemed always just out of reach. I had an emotional breakdown in 1975, & this opened the doorway to vision. I began to paint. As soon as I picked up the brushes for the first time I knew that, though I had much to learn, this was it. I was thirty-six years old. I had discovered a new frontier & left my old life. Mahler said, "The composer composes himself." I set out to align my life to this purpose – TO CREATE MYSELF so that I could create… I changed myself in many ways. Now I discovered I needed to be alone & separated from my husband. I continued to study, to learn my materials, but mostly to explore my own potential, & the nature of the world, spiritual & material. I knew that what I wanted to do was to share something very like a brilliant smile that will captivate a stranger. My first exhibit was in 1978. I did not pursue any further exposure. I wanted to nurture my abilities secretly & quietly so that what was still soft & evolving could mature undisturbed. In 1989 I initiated marketing activities again. My work was first seen in New York City at the Arthur Danziger Gallery in 1996. It has been a very difficult road. I isolated myself once for a period of eight years having no relationships so that I could concentrate all my energy on my work. My paintings remember the stained glass windows of my childhood, the allegories & myths of many cultures, dreams & spiritual beings, a sensual appreciation of the natural world. But, most of all, they are intended to add new possibilities to human consciousness & simply to share something beautiful. A friend once told me, after seeing my work for the first time, that she felt she had learned to look through new eyes. My second favorite comment on my work is, "I’ve never seen anything like that before!" |