Z-Arts hosts Deborah Durban artist reception
By Joyce Hamilton
Z-Arts will host an artist reception for Deborah Durban March 29 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Canyon Community Center in Springdale. Her exhibit, “Kith and Kin: Collaged Portraits,” will be on display from March 18 through April 27.
Alice Neel, Peter Blake, Chris Ofili, Yinka Shonibare, and David Hockney are a few of the many artists that have influenced Durban in this new body of collage work. She grew up in an artistic family. Her father was an art director in advertising in London 1950–90. Her mother and grandfather were both amateur painters, and her two brothers trained and worked in design and advertising. In her early years, her father took the family to new and contemporary pop arts and contemporary abstract exhibitions in London, introducing her to a lifelong love of contemporary art.
Knowing that she wanted to be in an artist at five years old, she was formally trained in her teens at the Wimbledon School of Art in London and later at Brighton and Sussex University. Durban has always continued to learn and experiment, more recently in workshops and classes from other artists, including Sue Cotter, Royden Card, Paul Smith, and Jonathon Talbot. She regularly practices life drawing when the opportunity arises.
She has had art exhibitions in museums and galleries in the UK, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New Mexico, and around Utah and is in many private collections.
Durban has been an art educator to a wide range of ages and enjoys helping students find their creative path. She was a freelance designer for many years before moving to the USA. She was the director of 2nd Street Gallery and artist co-op, while living in Philadelphia and has volunteered on several arts boards here in Utah. She now resides in Virgin.
Durban’s philosophy, both as an artist and as a teacher, is to find ways to access new and past forms or genres to suit each individual need for her students or for herself. Throughout her career, she has pursued many ways of creating her own art, including landscape and figurative painting, printmaking, collage, and book arts. Her exposure to the more abstract art of the ‘60s and then the more formal training at art school gave her a dichotomy of artistic decisions and a desire to pursue realism crossed with a looser, more colorful pop and abstract style. The collaged portraits in the show have closed that gap.
She hopes the pieces bring color and a sense of play to the viewer. The portraits are representations of her subjects, but they also bring a narration to the pieces by using the selection and editing of the paper, color, and ephemera to tell stories.
The Canyon Community Center located at 126 Lion Blvd. in Springdale.
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