Art

Item Description

Image size is 19.75"x25.5", giclee print, archival. 

Item Special Note

About the artist 
Deborah Garber picked up her first piece of chalk as a young child and never let go. The lush woodlands, towering oaks and rolling hills of her native Illinois were the sparks that ignited her love of landscape in all its moods and forms. Pastel is her primary medium, its portability and simplicity well suited to her love of travel.

After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design where she studied printmaking and illustration, Garber sought experience in life and art in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. For five years she lived out of a suitcase, toting a Spartan assortment of pastels. She stayed in city or village just long enough to absorb the spirit of place through the local language, customs and landscape, supporting herself through political cartooning, courtroom illustration, window design and translation.

Upon her return to the United States, Garber continued to build an extensive body of work and an artistic reputation through competitions, exhibitions and gallery representation. Her pastels, oils and prints are included in the collections of numerous private individuals, museums and corporations.

About the work 
Garber's unique vision of landscape is realized through rich layers of color and simplified form, characteristics that apply equally to her vast skyscapes and more intimate portrayals of roadsides, hamlets and homesteads. She creates a haunting, dreamlike world where human influence is visible in the form of trails, cultivated fields, barns and hedgerows. In Garber's world, the landscape is neither threatening nor comforting, but somewhere in between. The tension created by these opposing moods is the quality that makes Garber's work so engaging to the viewer, who then becomes an explorer in that landscape. This exploration of a landscape that is at once familiar and refreshingly non-traditional feeds both the mind and the eye.

Garber spends a great deal of time outside, looking at and absorbing impressions of the land so that her work, despite its flirtation with abstraction, has a sense of veracity. In her own words, "Though I am constantly observing the landscape around me, all my work is created in the studio away from nature's direct influence. That way I can be more creative in my approach to shapes, composition, and especially color. My aim is to take the viewer to a completely different place than that depicted in traditional landscapes. I invite the viewer to step in for a glimpse of the world that is in my mind's eye, a place of mystery and harmony."

www.deborahgarber.com