Debra Salopek
Born in California, raised in Mexico, Debra Salopek grew up bilingual, straddling 2 cultures. She received her BFA from the University of New Mexico in printmaking and drawing, has traveled and lived abroad for several years and makes the American Southwest her primary home. Debra worked as a fine art printmaker in Los Angeles, CA collaborating with artists such as Alex Katz, Robert Mangold, Silvia Plimack Mangold, Robert Therrien and others, before dedicating full time to her studio with a focus on painting and work on paper. She has exhibited nationally with work in corporate collections and museums; she is currently represented by the William Havu Gallery in Denver, CO, and the Kiechel Fine Art Gallery, in Lincoln, NE.
chronicle#6, 2019, Conte and graphite on paper, Image 4”x4”
Artist Statement
My work is a reductive distillation of light, atmosphere and form; it involves the study of the ephemeral quality of light and the texture of atmosphere in the landscape. I hold an unwavering commitment to the horizon line which functions as a compass, as much internal as external.
In the studio, my practice is to allow memory, materials and accidents build an image; therefore, the information I take from the landscape is, ultimately, mediated by materials and process where light and line become paint and surface. The experienced landscape becomes, in the studio, its own fiction, its own story.
At Tusen Takk
chronicles-iceberg, 2021. Graphite on Arches paper, Image 4.5"x6"
That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet.
- Emily Dickinson
As climate disruption begins to reveal its alarming potential, the spectral forms of lake icebergs may become increasingly rare, taking shape solely as part of our collective memory. While the urgency of a warming planet does not dominate the focus of Debra’s work, the specter of its impact is a fixed presence in the studio.
During her residency at Tusen Takk, Debra continued a series of work on paper started in 2019 entitled chronicles. The focus of this phase of the chronicles series was the winter ice, icebergs, and light as reflected on Lake Michigan. Photographs taken of the Lake served as the starting point for further investigation through different mediums, materials, and processes while at Tusen Takk.
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