Every artist has a story, but few begin as dramatically as Dalia Alekna’s.

She entered the world in Lithuania during World War II, with bombs exploding and gunfire surrounding the hospital where she was born. When she was only a month old, her parents fled their homeland to escape Communism. The family eventually passed through Ellis Island and settled in Chicago, where Dalia discovered a lifelong love of art.

Drawing came naturally. As a child, she would sit quietly sketching while her mother painted after work. Those shared moments sparked a passion that never left her. Dalia studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in drawing, painting, and printmaking.

At the Art Institute, she became deeply involved in printmaking and served as an assistant in the etching department. Her etchings, particularly aquatints, were selected for the Institute’s juried Art Sales and Rental Gallery and exhibited throughout Chicago. She was also a member of ARC Gallery, the city’s pioneering women’s cooperative gallery.

In 1974, Dalia and her husband moved to Walnut Creek, where they still live. As she raised two sons and helped care for her parents, she remained active in the arts by volunteering at Bedford Gallery, training docents, leading student tours, and giving demonstrations in local schools. She later returned to printmaking at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley and worked with artists at Sherry Bell’s printmaking studio in Lafayette.

Dalia’s work has moved between realism and abstraction. Today, she works exclusively in abstract acrylics, creating expressive paintings alive with movement, light, and color.

A pivotal chapter began after her mother’s death. Looking from her bedroom window toward Mount Diablo, Dalia started painting the changing clouds in pastel. For more than a decade, those paintings helped her process her grief. The clouds eventually gave way to California landscapes, including her Wine Country series, which gradually became more abstract.

She continues to work in series, exploring subjects such as clouds, landscapes, tropical vacations, and water. Her process is intuitive and spontaneous. She begins with freely applied marks, allowing shapes, colors, and textures to emerge. If a painting does not speak to her, she paints over it and begins again.

Dalia’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the Florean Museum in Romania, and Australia’s Newcastle Art Gallery. She is a member of the California Society of Printmakers and the Moraga Art Gallery.