She was born in Salzburg, Austria, but spent the better part of her childhood in Italy where she was introduced to art.
Blondell was born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1953 to an American father and an Austrian mother.
In Italy, her father taught her how to draw, and she explored European art while traveling with her parents.
[4] Her interest and education in art was heavily influenced by seventeenth and nineteenth century artists such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Caravaggio, and Francisco Goya.
She also references historical and biblical stories such as Judith beheading Holofernes in her 1999 watercolor painting I'll Make You Shorter By a Head.