“Art from the Heart”
I was born in southern NSW and have fond memories as a child growing up with a very loving and supportive family. During my school years I remember spending endless hours creating colourfull title-pages for all my school subjects and every book was covered adorning collage, drawings and whatever else I could get my hands on to make my books unique. There was never a plain old" brown paper" covered book to my name.
It wasn’t until I left school and started a fulltime job and wanted a hobby for those cold winter weekends to keep me occupied, so I went out and purchased my first set of paints and a few brushes. I was instantly hooked and only then did I realise I had a love for painting.
In my late 20's I got married and my husband and I decided to move to North Queensland where I yearned for more sunshine and a warmer climate.
I found the colours of my new surroundings so vivid, changing constantly which inspired me to incorporate a much brighter pallet of colours to my paintings to capture the essence of living in the tropics. My inspiration comes from my own life experiences, the people I meet, my family and friends, travel, nature and mostly this beautiful world we live in. Actually there is inspiration everywhere; I don’t have to look far :)
After completing a Certificate III in Art and Design and attending many workshops, I consider myself mostly self-taught. As this gained a lot of confidence, I started working as a support teacher at my local TAFE collage for students with a disability in the art sector then I moved on to teaching a specialised class I designed for young adults with a disability including a few mainstream drawing classes.
Whenever I teach or paint, I always enjoy the experience and love watching a painting evolve, it’s very exciting and brings me joy. The objective of my work is to develop interesting artworks, usually through the use of a dynamic colour palette. I’m certainly not shy to use an array of vivid colours in most of my works and I enjoy the challenges and the theory behind colour and how they "play" against each other and the ability to depict a mood or feeling. I feel blessed to able to do what I love and more-so when people say they love my work.
I held my first solo exhibition in Mackay QLD in 2012 that displayed 19 paintings mostly inspired from my experience of living in the tropics, titled “Art from the Heart”. Since then this title has stuck with me and feel it best describes me as an artist.
Debbie Connors