Because Seymour is from England and they own an estate there (St. Catherine's Court, a 15th century historic manor house near Bath, England), the family spends most of their vacations in the U.K. "I usually do a lot of art when I am there," Seymour says. "The boys ride horses a lot. They go there about twice a year - summer and Christmas - and stay for a few weeks. That is when their extended family comes and their friends come and they get to hang out with a lot of English kids so they have a whole other culture, which is really nice. The kids are different, but they are also the same. We have some frightfully proper English gentlemen who live right next door to us and you mix that with California kids and they seem to do just fine."

A HEART FOR ART

While Seymour has always been artistic, it wasn't until after she hit rock bottom that painting helped her return to the top. "When I turned 40, I found that my then hushand had been unfaithful and had left me completely bankrupt, owing more money than I even knew existed, and I was alone with my two children," she says. "I was finger painting with them and hanging them up, as one does, in the nursery. I was going to declare bankruptcy the next clay-, and I was at a charity event, a book signing for a book that I had written, and I walked around and I saw some artist was donating his work for charity. I signed on at the silent auction to have my children drawn, and the artist came by the house to do this. He saw the finger paintings and asked. 'Who did these?' and I told him I did, and he said. You are really good."

Seymour began taking lessons in watercolor, and it changed her life. "It helped me to process what would have been a huge depression," she says. "I processed my anger, my depression, my fear. I painted and drew with my kids, and the next thing I knew I was working on the pilot for Dr. Quinn. Never had to declare bankruptcy, sorted out all these issues, painted on the set between takes. Then the crew started wanting my paintings (I made limited editions). Then they wanted to wear them on T-shirts , so I did them as T-shirts. Then major art dealers came to me and wanted to represent me. And then I was commissioned by a credit card company, Discover Card, and they used my painting on the credit card. It was launched at the Guggenheim Museum where they showed three of my pieces and sold the one that was on the card for $25,000 to the Make a Wish Foundation.

By that time, Seymour was seven months pregnant with the twins and Keach realized Seymour needed to be painting in her own home studio. Today, Seymour has studios in Malibu and in England, she has at least 12 one-woman shows a year in America and other shows around the world and she is opening her own gallery in Los Angeles. Art is a business, but it is also still a way for her to bond with her boys.

TOO CLOSE TO CALL

While it seems like Seymour must inhabit a world of 25- hour days and eight-day weeks, her motivation comes from wanting to give back to a world she almost left behind. -"I had a near-death experience in which I actually left my body and I remember clearly that I took nothing with me: I didn't take my clothes, I didn't take my body, I took nothing," she says. "Who I am as me was not inside the body that I was looking at that they were resuscitating, and I looked down. 'No, I want to get back in my body! And then when I managed to get back in that body somehow, my body was out of control and I realized how tenuous life is. If you don't lake care of the vehicle that you are assigned to, which I consider to be the body ... it is a dicey and painful and toughs experience."