“My work is and always has been about water.” Deborah Freedman
Deborah Freedman, a landscape painter and printmaker based out of New York, creates emotive work about the nature of change. Deborah studied painting and printmaking at N.Y.U. with Knox Martin, Audrey Flack, James Wines and Robert Blackburn. Her work is included in numerous private and public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York Public Library and The U.S.Department of State. She is the co-founder with Marjorie VanDyke of VanDeb Editions – a printmaking atelier in New York City publishing etchings and monoprints.
Deborah first came to Oehme Graphics in 2013 for a summer workshop, and discovered a deep affinity for Master Printer Sue Oehme’s vision with watercolor monotypes and solarplate transfers. Deborah returned to OG in 2014, this time to collaborate with Sue one-on-one. During the week at OG, Deborah created a beautiful and dynamic body of prints, often using the same mirrored geography to start, but ultimately creating 15 completely different prints through the treatment of color, layering, and lines.
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Expanding on her series of Imagined Possibilities prints she started in 2013, Deborah completed a number of different variations on an 26 3/4” x 32” solarplate etching of a tree, creating variations through layering and changing colors.
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Initiating a new series, titled With or Without You (thanks for the title, Monroe Hodder!), Deborah also created 15 watercolor monotypes, 8 26 3/4” x 32” and 6 gorgeous diptychs sized 26.5 x 56”. These monotypes became hauntingly beautiful prints, ranging from icy and aquatic to deep vermilion and radiating heat, similar and wildly different at the same time.
Deborah’s work beautifully uses color and mark making to describe etheric landscapes that could be a multitude of places and from any era. The pieces that result are startling, and allow the viewer to pause in imagined possibilities.
Deborah signing prints in an incredible moment of andlelight and angles.
The week was a wonderful exploration in the studio with Deborah’s dedicated work ethic and sentimental optimism. Completing nearly 5 prints a day left a large finished collection of beautiful and emotional landscapes, lots of good memories, and plenty of inspiration.