Debra Tivens is one of those artists whose paintings introduce us to a world we have never seen before... but once glimpsed, we will recognize forever as her own.

We met her at an outdoor art show where we were struck by her large paintings of distinctive-looking characters caught up in fantastic scenes... which doesn't begin to describe what we found so fascinating. There was a fine art quality to her paintings that seemed to echo European masters. Indeed, some of the paintings were reminiscent of murals that adorn the walls of medieval churches and yet there was a hipness and a sense of humor to the imagery that gave it a contemporary feel. Clearly, here was an artist who had developed a style of her own, and whatever it took, we wanted her to join the stable of artists who painted a Pony.

A music major at American University in Washington, D.C. who has settled in Calabasas, California, Debra's trajectory as an artist has been defined by her passion for studying art history and exposing herself to a wide array of teachers. For years she has made a point of taking art classes from instructors she admires, incorporating a little bit of the best of each into her own work, but at the same time developing and eye and a hand for painting that is unique to her alone. Religious art intrigued her, as did various folk art traditions in this country and abroad. She found that imagining a figure in the context of a story helped her create a sense of character, so many of her paintings appear to fit the description given them in a recent issue of Art & Antiques magazine: "folk surrealism."

Her love of opera - her daughter is an up-and-coming opera singer currently under contract with Seattle and San Francisco Opera Companies - led her to draw on the final scene of Richard Wagner's opera, The Ring of the Niebelungs, for the imagery on her Painted Pony. The four-part work incorporates all the popular themes of love, deception, and the battle of good versus evil, as personified by characters from Norse Mythology and Germanic legend.

This fantastic pony is available for sale now, and is currently on display in Phoenix, Arizona.