Deanna Chilian

Deanna Chilian was born in the Northeast, lived in Colorado and then Asheville, NC before making her home in the vibrant city of Pittsburgh, PA. Her path to art as a profession has included the practice of law, non-profit management, and a career teaching pilates and Gyrotonic®. Each has contributed to her development as an artist: the ability to craft and communicate a message; an eye for both balance and tension in a composition; a tactile awareness and sense of movement that informs the texture and flow of a work surface. Time spent outdoors in the Rocky Mountains and traveling through the Southwest has left an indelible imprint on her innate sense of color and line, resulting in a vibrancy in her work. Her work is mostly non-representational and speaks to universal themes such asdesire for connection, exploring identity and the search for home and sanctuary.

Chilian’s lifelong interest and passion for making art, specifically painting, has remained steady and evolving. She has internalized influences from modernists Matisse and Miro, abstraction pioneers Hilma af Kilmt, Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky, and Abstract Expressionists Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell and Willem de Kooning. Her art education has been through mentorships, time on the canvas, and workshops with Katherine Chang-Liu, Skip Lawrence and Gwen Fox. Chilian has exhibited in group and solo shows and her work is in personal and corporate collections in the US, Europe, Japan and the Middle East.