This photograph was taken in 1976 when I was 37 years old, the year I began painting. This is
how I would like to be remembered. It is, as my husband says, my eternal dream self. I am now 85 years old and have been an artist for 48 years.
It was bequeathed to me by my great grandfather, John Hell, who translated his name to a more comfortable word in English speaking America. I have always loved my name and early on decided to sign my paintings with just this one word.
My mother told me she did not know why but she knew long before I was born that my first name had to be Deanna. I was born in 1939 in rural Minnesota. When we moved to Minneapolis in 1945, I missed those wide open spaces, the lakes, the forests and the farms of my relatives, and I still miss that lost world as I've lived in cities ever since. In Minneapolis I attended Catholic schools for ten years, a public high school for 2 years and then the University of Minnesota.
I moved to Lost Angeles in 1960, married my first husband and was a reasonably happy housewife and mother until 1977, and then I had to get free. I left my husband, but my son, Jamie, was always a most important part of my life.
My paintings remember dreams and myths of many cultures as well as the glowing stained glass windows in the churches of my childhood. Rocks, trees, birds and many branching things appear in much of my art though more from my imagination than reality.
In the 1980's I moved to Santa Barbara and, unbelievably, discovered accounting. I found a job working for the Kinko's coporate office as a financial statement accountant that allowed me to work in their office for 7 months of the year and have the other 5 months free to paint and to paint whatever the muse required of me. I worked at Kinko's for 17 years.
I now live in Goleta, California, with my second husband, S. W. Rice, a writer of incredible talent. His work has inspired three of the paintings on this site. Writing was my first love before I discovered painting, andI have told the story of my life in two books available at www.amazon.com and other online bookstores.
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