Deika Rae was born in March, 1970 in Richland, Washington. She grew up surrounded by artists; both her mother and her father were artists (painting and sculpture, respectively), as were her grandmother and two grandfathers. Though she was constantly surrounded by art and creativity, she was first prompted to try her own hand at art after a school field trip to the Phoenix Art Museum when she was ten. Impressed with the work from the Ming Dynasty, she began to experiment with #2 pencil pastels. As she became more proficient with this style, she branched out into graphic design.

Rae earned her Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design at Collins Design School in Phoenix, Arizona, but she continued drawing and painting in her free time. Though she worked for ten years as a graphic designer in Phoenix, Portland, and New York City, her passion for painting abstracts in oil eventually prompted a career change. Rae went back to school at the Portfolio Center in Atlanta, Georgia in 2003 to pursue illustration, believing that an education in illustration would help her improve her artistic vision.

Rae loves to present her work at underground art exhibits in Brooklyn, Atlanta and Los Angeles, but she has also enjoyed significant attention throughout the art world at large. Drawing from influences like Ray Johnson, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Basquiat, Ed Ruscha, and Rothko, Rae has created work that has been shown at the Portfolio Center (2001-2003) and an event by the Society of Illustrators in New York City (2003). Consequently, the list of Rae’s admirers is constantly growing both nationally and internationally.