Deb Baker Hall
Mixed Media Artist
Sacramento, CA
I work abstractly and beyond selecting a particular color palette I don't preplan my imagery. Staying open to what "arrives" is my only strategy. Responding intuitively to "what next" in terms of adding fresh adjacencies of color, pattern, texture and forms is how I build my visual story.
My background as a landscape designer, environmental horticulturist and geology-loving trekker sources much of my imagery. Through scarred and textured surfaces, torn and degraded papers, broken lines and dimensional “finds”, I reference the places I love best -- slot canyons and rubble-strewn streams; the flat and papered walls of urban streetscapes; the geometric adjacencies of multi-hued and textured growing fields.
In all ways, my artistic practice mirrors my joy in discovering what lies beneath and within these weathered terrains and expresses my deep interest in what time passing both builds and degrades.
My formal art studies at the University of Akron focused on printmaking. Mono and relief prints still figure in my work as collage elements and substrates for both my paintings and collage works.
Art Education
University of Akron
Fine Arts Post-Baccalaureate Program
1991-1995
Akron, OH
Creative Vision Program
2016 & 2019
Art2Life Academy
Marin, CA
Mentorship - Mark Eanes,
Prof. Emeritus, California College of the Arts
2024
Residencies
Artist Alliance Stay-in-Place Summer Residency
Summer 2023
Jen Tough Gallery
Santa Fe, NM
Publications
Artsy Shark Featured Artist (2023)
https://www.artsyshark.com/2023/09/04/featured-artist-deb-hall/
Artists of the Bay Area, Vol. 1 (2022)
Jen Tough Gallery / Blurb Books
https://www.blurb.com/b/11023213-artists-of-the-bay-area-vol-1