Deborah Peeples
Deborah Peeples, born in Brooklyn, New York, is a Boston area painter who exhibits her work nationally. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Washington University School of Fine Arts and also studied at the Lake Placid School of Art. She returned to a full-time art practice after raising her family and working for many years as a community, social and political activist. Peeples has been an active member of The Crit Lab, Yellow Chair Salon, New England Wax, Pell Lucy and is Board President of the Cambridge Art Association.
Her work has been exhibited across New England including at the New Bedford Art Museum, Danforth Art Museum, Bristol Art Museum, and Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum. She has also exhibited at MAPSpace and the Chaffey Community Museum of Art. Her work can be found in collections throughout the United States and abroad.
Peeples lives in Cambridge and works in her studio at Joy Street Studios in Somerville.
My paintings begin with the same underlying architecture and semiotic language. The aggressive re-articulation of the circle is about emphasizing my existence, my presence, and the desire to be seen. Shapes jostle for position to communicate and to determine their relationship to the others, their juxtapositions creating imbalance, insecurity and surprise. They are about wholeness, the metaphorical holes inside us, emptiness and femaleness.
The buoyant circles whirl in a turbulent, exuberant dance, performing their individual parts on a crowded stage, each a unique and important contributor to the ensemble. As an adoptee, I wrestle with how I fit in the world, what I expose, and the fear of being truly seen. I am exploring the space between essential and enough.
The dense, saturated colors reflect how I surround myself in the world. Color allows an openness and directness that is my most authentic and confident expression of self.
