Deborah DeWit is a Northwest photographer, oil painter, pastelist and author. A fifth-generation painter, she is self-taught, and is a full-time, self-supporting artist, with a thirty year commitment to finding mediums which can express her ideas and way of seeing the world. DeWit is particularly thoughtful and perceptive about the role of life in art and vice-versa. Her works have been shown in galleries and exhibitions, have been privately and publicly collected, and she has been featured on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Art Beat” and KATU’s “AM Northwest.” Ideas fuel her imagery, and although her style is representational, much of the content is subtly but intentionally metaphorical. Currently much of her work focuses on the necessary and inescapable relationship between nature and the human experience.
Professional Biography
Deborah, born in 1956, grew up in a family in which her parents, naturalized Americans, are descended from four generations of Dutch painters and musicians. But it was her father’s career in the international grain business that took Deborah and her family to live in foreign countries on three continents and in six different American states, instilling in her a wanderlust and quest for new experience. After graduating from high school in Rye, New York she entered Cornell University with an intended Agronomy major. A love of photography and art drew her away from college and she left after two years. Instead of receiving any formal art or photography training, Deborah’s natural inclination was to take to the road in search of imagery and a broader sense of the World. In her twenties she traveled extensively, alone, developing a creative process inspired by atmosphere and light and fueled by a zest for knowledge. She has been showing her work professionally and continuously since 1976.
Deborah’s artistic search began with photography and journal writing. Her photographs capture everyday scenes transformed by the light that fascinates her. After twenty years of traveling to photograph she has expressed the experience in her book Traveling Light - Chasing an Illuminated Life, first published by Impassio Press, Seattle in 2003 and re-issued by William, James & Co. in 2006. Combining words and the photographic images, she attempts to offer a different creative form altogether. Her photographs continue to be used in calendars,on book covers, in literary journals and on note cards.
In keeping with her focus on images and the written word, her pastel work is known for its reading and writing themes. Through these subjects, and other daily scenes, she attempts to express the human need for comfort, communication, knowledge and freedom, the goals of which often conflict and are difficult to experience simultaneously. Her work is narrative and realist in style. Many of her images about reading and books are collected in Deborah DeWit Marchant: In the Presence of Books, published by William, James & Co.
Deborah added oil paint to her list of mediums in 1999 and has developed an expressive style combining detail and loose, layered paint with a focus on natural subjects. Much of this work describes our human relationship with nature and the many moods of the seasons, emotional and temporal. She has also spent considerable time watching her cats and as a result she has included these beautiful creatures in her paintings. Forty of these works are featured in the book Painting Cats (2008 William, James & Co.) in which she writes about the influence cats have had on her artwork and her life.
In 2008-09 Deborah collaborated with her filmmaker husband, Carl Vandervoort on Wetlands, a documentary about a small piece of wild land in her suburban neighborhood and the paintings that are a result of her experiences there. www.wetlandsdocumentary.com
Deborah’s photographs, pastels and oils can be found in many personal, corporate and University collections across the country, and she continues to show regularly in galleries in the Northwest. Both her photographs and pastels have been used on the covers of books, magazines and catalogues and have been reproduced in calendars.
In 1990, with the founding of their company Simple Minds, Deborah and her former husband, Robert Marchant, joined forces to further establish Deborah’s art career and expand her audience to a national level. Slowly the company grew to include over 170 note cards of Deborah’s images, distributed nationwide. Today, reproductions and note cards of Deborah’s work are represented by Robert and his company DeWit-Marchant Fine Art and Graphics ( www.dewit-marchant.com ) and originals and information about exhibitions can be found on Deborah’s website www.deborahdewit.com.
Selected Gallery Exhibition History
Waterstone Gallery, Portland, OR 2010
Mary Lou Zeek Gallery, Salem, OR 2005, 2006, 2008
Fraga Gallery, Bainbridge Island, WA 2004, 2005, 2006
Beppu Gallery, Pacific City, OR 2000, 2001, 2002
The Lawrence Gallery, OR: 1981,’82,’83,’84,’88
Gallery at Salishan (formerly Maveety), Gleneden Beach, OR: 1988, ‘90, ‘92, ‘94, ‘95, ‘96,’97
The Lisa Harris Gallery, Seattle, WA: 1986, ‘87, ‘88, ‘91, ‘96
The Augen Gallery, Portland, OR: 1984, ‘85, ‘86
Editions Ltd., San Francisco and Indianapolis: 1981,’83, ‘84, ‘86, ‘92
Hanson/Howard Gallery, Ashland, OR: 1987, ‘91,’93, ‘96, 2004
American Art Co., Tacoma, WA.: 1984, ‘94, ‘95, ‘96,’98
ArtPaleis Promenade, Den Haag, Netherlands: 1983
Southend-on-Sea, England: 1983
The Silver Image Gallery, Seattle, WA.: 1986
Collections (selected)
Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV Kaiser Permanente, Portland, OR. Good Samaritan Hospital, Portland, OR.
E.F. Hutton, Portland, OR EF Hutton, Portland, OR Arthur Andersen, Seattle, WA
Headquarters Co., Seattle and Portland. Intel Corporation, Portland, OR Hewlett Packard, Vancouver, WA
St. Louis University US Trust Co., New York, NY Tigard Public Library
.
Publications and Commissions
1984 thru 1992: Twelve fine-art posters published by Editions Ltd, San Francisco, CA.
1986: Commissioned to create two poster images for the Huntington Museum, Pasadena, CA.
1987: Commissioned to create the Salem Art Festival Poster
1989: Featured in the book “Northwest Originals: Oregon Women and Their Art”
1995 thru 2007: 18 covers for Bas Bleu-Bookseller by Post-Atlanta, GA
1994 &1995 & 1997& 1998, 2000,2004: Images used for book covers by Devorss & Co., Marina Del Rey, CA
1997&1999, &2002 & 2004: Cover art for Open Spaces Magazine
1997& 1998: Book Covers for Self-Realization Publishers,Los Angeles, CA
1998: Book Cover for Bedford/St. Martins Press, Boston, MA
1997 thru 2000: Commissioned photographs, drawings and paintings of St.Louis University Environmental Extension Site in Louisiana, MO
1998: Cover Art for Levenger Catalog, Delray Beach, FL
1999: Cover for Orion Magazine, Fall Issue
1999,2001,2002,2003, 2004, 2005, 2006: Calendars for Cedco Publishing, San Rafael, CA
2007-2011: Calendars for Brush Dance and Ronnie Sellers
2001: Kows for Kids Project, Portland, OR “Elsie’s Journey”--permanently displayed in Multnomah County Central Library
2001:Five book covers for Penguin Academic Series, Longman Publishing, New York, NY
2002:American Orient Express commission illustrations for their publicity and travel brochures
2003: “Traveling Light: A Photographer’s Journey” published by Impassio Press, Seattle WA
2006: “Traveling Light: Chasing an Illuminated Life” re-issue published by William, James & Co., Wilsonville, OR
2006: Tigard Public Library commissions 5’ x 8’ oil triptych for permanent installation on entry point wall.
2007: “Deborah DeWit Marchant: In the Presence of Books” published by William, James & Co., Wilsonville, OR
2008: “Painting Cats” published by William, James & Co., Wilsonville, OR
Teaching and Jurying Experience
1982-83: Artist-in-Residence, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology
1983, 1988 thru 1991, 2000, ‘01,’02, ‘03, ‘04:Photography and Pastel Workshops, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Otis, OR
1987-’88: Photography Workshop, Salem Art Association
1986, ‘87: Guest Lecturer, Oregon State University
1989: Juror, ArtQuake Festival, Marketplace, Portland, Or.
1991: Juror, Salem Art Fair, 2-D entrants
1999, 2004: Pastel workshop-Oregon College of Arts and Crafts, Portland, Oregon
2007 Juror, Art in the Pearl, Portland, OR
2007 Board of Directors , Sitka Center for Art and Ecology
2008 The Presence of Books Workshop Lewis and Clark College with poet Kim Stafford
Best of Show awarded by the Salt Lake City Gallery Association, Utah Arts Festival 1997
Best of Show awarded by the Board of Art in the Pearl, Portland, Oregon 1999
Honorary Chair and Featured Artist of the Ninth Annual Sitka Art Invitational, Portland, Oregon, 2001
Curator and Logistics Chair for Sitka Art Invitational: 2002-6, 2008-10
Governor’s Office Exhibit, Salem, Oregon July 2006