Deb Baker Hall
Contemporary Mixed Media Artist
Lives & creates in Sacramento, CA
Discovery, not perfection, is my ultimate goal in art making.
Discovery about how far I can push paint, paper, graphite, ink, pastels and found materials to form a visual narrative.
Discovery of what lights and excites me given the hues, textures, random marks and forms that find their way into my work.
Discovery of how willing I am to risk loss-for-reward as I take each work through a cycle of building, degrading, adding and removing multiple elements and materials.
As a mixed media artist, working abstractly, I draw heavily on my background as a landscape designer, environmental horticulturist and geology-loving trekker. Through scarred and textured surfaces, torn and degraded papers, broken lines and dimensional “finds”, I reference the places I love best: slot canyons, granite domes, rubble-strewn streams, and any trail ascending to spare, expansive spaces that reveal their geological origins.
Likewise, I find pleasure in the flat and papered walls of urban streetscapes and 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.
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 assemblages.
For now, my aesthetic interest is in layering fields of color, texture and pattern with a reference to the strata of my immediate environment, both natural and human constructed. Working intuitively and from sensorial memory, I’m driven by a deep desired to capture and convey the emotive impact these places have on me.
On a more cerebral level, I am hugely intrigued by the cultural associations and feelings specific colors evoke, and of how color adjacencies interact to change the character of any given hue. My sense is that new works are waiting to emerge from my ongoing exploration and experiments in this direction.
Shows & Exhibitions
2020
Dallas Metro Arts Contemporary
Modern Art National Juried Exhibition
Plano, TX
Flagler County Art League
HONORABLE MENTION AWARD
Every Color Has A Story Juried Exhibition
Palm Coast, FL
Verge Center for the Arts
Annual Auction (Juried)
Sacramento, CA
Blue Line Gallery
New Member Exhibit
Roseville, CA
SAC Open Studio Tour
Sacramento, CA
Blue Line Gallery
Member Medley
Roseville, CA
2019
SAC Open Studio Tour
Sacramento, CA
Verge Center for the Arts
Annual Auction (Juried)
Sacramento, CA
2018
SAC Open Studio Tour
Sacramento, CA
Verge Center for the Arts
Annual Auction (Juried)
Sacramento, CA
Education
2016
Creative Vision Program
Art 2 Life Academy
Marin, CA
1991 - 1995
Mary Schiller Myers School of Art
University of Akron
(Emphasis in Printmaking)
Akron, OH