Deborah Sears - Artist Statement

Communicate with Spirit

Deborah Sears is a Canadian artist living and working in Canmore, AB and Parksville BC. She studied fine art at school but began her career as a registered social worker and a registered psychologist specializing in social and psychological research, gerontology, and thanatology.

 After retirement, Deborah returned to art school and earned a Bachelor of Fine Art, a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts (Honours), and a Master of Arts in Fine Art (Merit) in painting and printmaking.  Deborah explores abstract themes of vulnerability and impermanence; temporality and mortality; and spirituality and transcendence. She believes that art promises the unknown and brings the intangible within our grasp. Art represents for us a dream, a hope, or a possibility which life would be meaningless without.

With emphasis on process-driven exploration, improvisation and rigor, Deborah’s art is painterly in gestural attention to colour and space exploring concepts of ageing, memory, perception, and symbolism, while grounded in the styles of 20th century modern abstract art rendered contemporary and seductive through 21st century processes, techniques and interpretations, resulting in works that feel simultaneously timeless and timely.

Deborah teaches a skill-based course in Modern Abstract Art at Elder College in Nanaimo BC. She believes that just as the artistic representation of the content of the external visual image requires skill, so too, does the representation of the content and context of the internal experience of a life of meaning and wonder.