ABOUT

When I was a little girl growing up in Kenwood, CA, I sketched everyone around me: my parents and siblings, the old relatives on Christmas Eve, a visiting stranger, crazy neighbors and best pals. The admiration and compliments of my peers encouraged my passion. 

“It is difficult to build a business on art,” my construction business family always reminded me. It made it difficult to trust my art at the time, but I did trust my ability to build beautiful bodies as a personal fitness instructor and trainer. It was the best art anatomy study ever. 

Life took me through eye opening experiences and the most prolific was when I became an art sales person with “The Art of John Lennon,” a highly respected national traveling art gallery experience. I learned I had to do one thing, to be me and to work from my personal place. 

I decided to turn my whole house into a creative space. I hang my paintings throughout and rotate them like my own personal art gallery. My composition is of all sizes, rich in color, beauty, power, sexiness, sadness, truth, and trepidations. I depict not just the beauty in life, but the ugly, animalistic, the liars, thieves and deceit too. Because of the vulnerability my art expresses, many musicians have commissioned me to do album covers for them that explore these themes. 

I don’t just paint people though. Growing up in Kenwood, the heart of wine country, has inspired me to paint the scenery around me: grape vines, mustard fields, odd trees and high mountains. My love for animals has also made its way onto my canvases. I have begun exploring abstract styles that I am excited for the world to see. The best thing about art is the inspiration and discipline it brings me, and how there are so many different ways to express it.

Debra