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Featured Artist
Lisa Bebi
Award-winning artist Lisa Bebi grew up in a family where creativity and storytelling flourished. The San Diego native’s father was a self-made newspaper man and her mother would often recite the individual and rich histories of the items she sold from her antiquities store in Lemon Grove. At a young age, Bebi’s appetite for painting and self _expression was nourished by her father and uncle—a well established graphic artist in New York--who would supply her with a cornucopia of art supplies. Bebi said she vividly remembers her first watercolor tubes of paint “making my mouth water.”
Throughout school Bebi’s raw ambition and talent drew attention and praise from respected instructors and eventually the gifted student graduated from San Diego State University in 1977 with a degree in fine art, with an emphasis in painting and printmaking. In 1980 Bebi continued her education abroad at the renowned College of Fine Art, London University, studying commercial art lettering and fine art painting. Those who knew her agreed that Bebi’s future was promising.
But in 1983, after returning to the United States, tragedy struck when Bebi’s husband, Gerald, died after suffering a heart attack. The event devastated the young mother of two and temporarily derailed her promising career. She abandoned her art and worked to support herself and her children while working as a paralegal before going on to law school. But her artwork was always on her mind.
In 1991 Bebi married prominent attorney Gastone Bebi and gave birth to her third child in 1994. Only recently has she reemerged as the artist with a unique perspective on life and history, having found the time again to devote to her two greatest passions---family and painting.
Bebi’s work has won numerous awards including first place at the Escondido Arts Partnership for “Dunce Quartet” and a second place for “Best climate on earth.” She has also been the featured artist at an art gallery in East County and been the subject of newspaper and television profiles.
Bebi resides in La Mesa, California with her husband, youngest daughter, a Doberman, an American pitbull terrier and a cat named Princess Fifi. Her two eldest children, James and Brooke, are writers and live in Santa Barbara and San Diego respectively.
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