Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Deborah Hall. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Deborah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

I consider myself an emerging artist at a mature age. And, yes, there are times when I wonder how my art would have evolved if I had embraced a daily practice decades ago. I had so many false starts, primarily because I didn’t know what or how I wanted to paint. It took decades and two varied careers to realize any art practice worth pursuing, for me, was based in “why create?” not what to produce.

I was already 40 when I enrolled as a fine arts post-baccalaureate student at the University of Akron. Even then, it was a 20-year deferred dream to study art. My original degree was in communications and I’d built a successful though unsatisfying carrier as a magazine editor, feature writer, publicist and radio and tv producer.

Being in art school gave me all the technical but none of the emotional /directional keys to sustaining a genuinely personal art practice. I was stuck in a performance-based, hoop-jumping mind set. Though again successful in art school, winning tuition scholarships and being in some modest shows, it simply felt end-product focused with the measure of my success based on external approval.

A move to California, in 2001, led me to a new career — landscape design. It was far more fulfilling than my previous career and I was applying much of the design training I’d acquired in art school. When I retired from this second career, I had a clearer path forward for my art: I intuitively knew that the one way to truly retire my need for performance-based success was through the creative process.

Today, my art practice is devoted to experimentation. Each day is an act of discovery, not just about what varied mediums can and can’t do, but about what my ego wants to censor and my curious soul wants of allow. The challenge is to welcome all those pilgrim parts of myself: to staying open to NOT KNOWING; to surrendering control; to risking failure; to allowing what arrives rather than enforcing something prescribed. I work abstractly.. I don’t pre-plan my imagery. It took a lot of emotional maturing to arrive at this joyful juncture, which I could not have embraced earlier in my life.

Deborah, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a mixed media artist providing private art collectors, home decorators and gallerists with original art, either for personal acquisition or for second party customers. I do not provide reproductions of my work for mass retail. My focus is on providing one-of-a-kind works that have personal appeal. My works are generally small in scale (typically 24x24in. or smaller), meant for intimate viewing in curated live/work spaces.

I work abstractly and beyond selecting a particular color palette I don’t preplan my imagery., As a horticulturist, retired landscape designer and geology-loving trekker, I am truly enamored with exposed earth strata and geometric adjacencies of multi-hued vistas and growing fields. As a city dweller, I find the flat and papered walls of urban streetscapes equally compelling. In all ways, it is these weathered terrains and my curiosity about what lays beneath and within them that informs my art. To that end, I use multiple passes of paint over collage elements I find or print myself. Selective sanding and glazing add depth and, often, a patina of age. In this manner I express my deep interest in what time passing both builds and degrades.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

The biggest shift for me in my creative journey came when I stopped asking myself WHAT to make but WHY create at all. I knew the urge was there, always! At times I’d find myself emotionally blubbering in some gallery, not necessarily moved by the work on view but by the fact I was not producing work myself.

My breakthrough came when I starting asking myself why it matter. What came to me was a clear directive.

My deepest desire is to make art that cracks me open;
o that frees me of my need for perfection, control, approval and success;
o that nurtures and builds my sense of joy, wonder and trust in my inner voice/intuition;
o that feeds my soul and strengthens my attunement to creative source;
o that opens doors and reveals ways for me to serve others in ways I have never imagined.

When I made my art practice about discovery not end-products, the why of making art was apparent.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

In every creative session I am meeting myself — reveling in what delights my eye, grabs my attention, begs for exploration.
I know aspects like fear of failure and need for control have kept me from being open, playful and experimental in so many aspects of my life and varied careers. But I also know, from experience, that I thrive when I risk failure and stay open to new trials and adventures. In other words, my art practice is about building a fuller, more authentic life in a very day-to-day engagement.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.debhallart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbhallart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debhallart/