DEBORAH READ BELGUENDOUZ
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My first love was for color.  How color influences your emotions.  How colors change depending on their surroundings.  I am fascinated by how one color affects another and how the viewer is affected by their visual reception in his/her mind.  My second love is energized space.  Someday when you are at an art museum, pick out a painting and really analyze it.  Sit and just look at it.  You will start to notice that often the most amazing part of the painting is not the main subject, but a tiny little space in the painting.  This is the difference, in my opinion, from a good painting to a great painting.  Good paintings (not great) are missing something that is often hard to pin down.  I believe that what they are missing is that little bit of brilliantly used space - often a 'negative' space   I can think of one of George de La Tour (1593-1652) paintings in The Louvre ("Le Trichure") where I noticed this in a very dramatic way.  In this painting of card players, there is a small patch of bright red used in the space in the crook of the elbow of the card 'cheat'.  This little triangular patch just vibrated in the most brilliant way and was repeated in two other sections of the painting.  When I viewed the painting holding my hand up to block this seemingly unimportant bit of color, the work immediately lost something critical to its brilliance.

Rembrandt fascinates me in this way too.  If you look at each of his paintings in an historical context, they are quite standard for his time.  Most Dutch artists at his time were painting in a very similar manner.  So what is it that sets Rembrandt apart?  It is these same areas brilliance - an unusual use of thick painterly white for the ruff of a collar, a dash of red, an unusual layering of colors -that is what makes his work so great and unique.

I am also influenced by line quality - the way a line is drawn.  This quality is also very hard to pin down and explained in non-visual terms.  All different types of line drawings interest me.  This is the reason for my love of North African decorative arts, Arabic calligraphy and Islamic art.  It often combines the most beautiful calligraphy with an incredible sense of color and form.  Wonderful examples can be found in the Persian miniatures under the Timurids in the 14th Century as well as the Ottoman Turkish miniatures from the 16th Century.   This is the reason why you can almost always see some sort of lines in my work.

When I paint I tend to combine all of these influences in some way.  But I do not combine them in a structured, pre-planed approach.  I will begin work on a painting as a form of meditation.  I will start with a meditation on a particular color or form or idea.  While I paint I am just letting the energy of the painting and myself merge so there is no notion of time or space or of me doing something to the painting.  If the work is successful - the work loses all dualistic concepts of the painter and the painting as being separate.  This is when 'magic' happens.  This is when the work goes beyond oneself and taps into something bigger - something spiritual - something that hopefully the viewer will be transformed by - even if for only a few seconds.  That is at least, my intention!

Returning to the United States in 1987, she continued to pursue her interest in color theory and collage.  She exhibited and sold her work to private collectors.  In 1996 Deborah and her husband moved to Mohammedia, Morocco.  She exhibited and sold her work locally, and also taught art to a group of expatriates in Casablanca.  During this period she developed her collage style.  In 2001 Deborah and her family returned to Cambridge, MA where she exhibited and sold her work at Webster & Co. in Boston.  In 2004 the family returned to Marrakech Morocco where she and her husband designed and fabricated a line of Moroccan clothing and fabrics.  Deborah continued to paint and sold her work to private collectors. 

2005 brought Deborah back to the Boston area where she presently resides and works with her husband and their two children.  Deborah’s work endeavors to create an object with transforming power.  Just as a tree, edifice or hue can transform a space and a viewer’s mental state, so this work strives to achieve an impact on the viewer through color, form, line quality and pattern.  The works can also be viewed on a more cerebral level involving color theory, technique and references to her own life, emotions and thoughts.  The work is influenced by Rembrandt, Albers, North African textiles, Islamic art, and Matisse.

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