Dee Ann Segula's Portraits from "Through the Looking Glass"

"I work from the heart - from a private world that I'm finally exhibiting." So says Dee Ann Segula who reveals her "private world" as a stunningly colorful and imaginative one you might find in Alice's looking glass. Dee calls them "dream-scapes." Here you see people (harlequins) riding zebras ("dressed-up horses," Dee says) with cats as tag-along riders chasing a wasp, say. Having grown up on Alice in Wonderland, Grimm's Fairy Tales and the Greek myths - and games such as chess, Dee has a memory and imagination stored with many combinations of these. She creates a new world of art out of "just being human." Perhaps she inherited some of that world from her mother and grandmother who were painters.

Why so many animals in Dee's work? For one thing, "They're easier to get along with - people scared me as a kid." For another, her Dad was a vet and she grew up surrounded by animals. "Zebras are the most graphic animal on the planet."

Where do her themes and images come from? Dee says she doesn't know; they just appear in her imagination. "I see the final painting in my head and then figure out how to do it."

A visitor notes: "I'm amazed at how many colors she gets to work together." However it happens, it's intuitive. She says she doesn't think; she just does it.

Dee says that artwork offers security and serenity in the face of a chaotic and threatening world. Right now, she's turning to knitting "as a meditation and a comfort - therapy for the next few years." Dee knows something about therapy: she had a lung transplant 15 years ago and has had other medical procedures since then.

She works in a two year cycle through her triple skills: painting , knitting, and jewelry design and fabrication. The first year is for research and the second for development - that's her master plan.

All her work keeps her "excited in a world dark and hard to deal with." She is one of many artists who say, "Art saves my life."