Creative Directory

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Deborah Duffin Artist

Deborah is best known for her three dimensional work in wire and recycled materials. Drawings of natural forms, patterns and rhythms provide a starting point for her lyrical works which have been shown widely within the locality including Greenway Gardens and Torre Abbey. She began working with wire nearly thirty years ago, and has exhibited extensively in London and national touring shows. In 1995 she was commissioned by British Telecommunications to make a celebratory sculpture, with old telephone wire, to mark their change over from Analogue to Digital technology, and her interest in recycled materials has continued to develop since then.

Finished pieces are frequently shown in relation to garden sites and architectural features. The characteristics of the site become part of the work, as these help determine the final form of these malleable pieces which become in their turn a part of the whole. Pieces can be combined to create installations in which the work makes use of its context - a recent piece created for 'Affirmations' in the Spanish Barn at Torre Abbey, made use of the height. A series of around 20 pieces were suspended from the huge beams. As visitors moved around the work, air currents caused the works to slowly revolve creating a secession of changing relationships.

Deborah has frequently undertaken commissions - often in unusual and challenging spaces - a private stairwell, an awkward alcove or the branch of a tree - exciting adventures into the unknown. She now has work in private, public and corporate collections in Britain, Europe and the USA.

Recent works have made use of her own and other peoples rubbish - the multifarious collection of stuff we tend to throw out is an inspiration to her - providing an endless supply of colours, textures and forms with which to play. She uses cut up containers, bottle tops, plastic packaging, discarded wire, and much more. These are transformed into beautiful, organic forms, in which the materials are often unrecognisable to the viewer. The resulting pieces have an intangible, spiritual energy, drawn from many loving years of following her own intuitive path.

Deborah's drawings, range from tiny objective studies to huge human sized works, full of energy and life, she works mainly with coloured pencil on paper, translating natural objects into abstract patterns and forms, these then inform her three dimensional works, installations and paintings which follow on from the ideas she develops. Some of her exhibitions have combined more than one medium, and she loves to rise to unusual challenges which present themselves.

View my website http://www.deborahduffin.co.uk/