Bio - Kansas Artist, Debra Clemente

Fine art painter Debra Clemente was born Debra Ann Brown, June 16, 1959, in Ottawa, KS. At age 6 her family moved to Wichita. Whenever it was time to choose an activity with a playmate, young Debra always suggested drawing. She couldn’t get enough of it and to this day she still hasn’t.

Debra’s first mentor the late Bill Harrison, a nationally acclaimed painter and sculptor, was the father of her childhood best friend living next door in Wichita, Kansas. While playing around the home where he had his studio, Debra always had an eye out for what Harrison was doing and asked very specific questions about his varying media and approach.

Recognizing her desire and talent, Debra’s parents arranged for her to take private art lessons at the age of 12 with Wilma Wethington, a well-noted watercolorist living in Wichita. With Wethington, Debra studied drawing and watercolor painting in the studio and en-plein air on three separate painting trips to Colorado in her young teens.

Although she enjoyed the pleasures of fine art, Debra chose to study commercial art at the University of Kansas. In 1981, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Art’s Degree in Visual Communications. Throughout Debra’s work as a graphic designer and illustrator she created product displays, promotions, and identity packages for varied corporate clients. Being an artist has meant many things to Debra during the different stages of her life. Throughout her married years (now going on 26), she has worked alongside her husband David in his home design and construction business in Lawrence, KS. Her color renderings of David's home designs helped close many custom home contracts. Debra designed furniture, faux painted walls, and custom painted tiles to create dream homes and fulfill her creative side while raising small children.

When the younger of her two children started first grade, Debra reassessed her life and her art. As with many young mothers, Debra had not had taken time for herself. She decided then to put "making art" a higher priority for her pleasure and her sanity. Experimenting at first with pastels, Debra began painting her world, which at that time still focused mainly on her children. Thus, children were often the motifs of her first work but as time pasted her world widened. During a Colorado fall oil painting excursion, with her father as her companion, Debra rediscovered her appreciation of nature’s beauty and fell in love all over again with landscape painting.

Debra is pleased when the unbounded energy she feels when painting is evident in her work. Painting wet into wet, she focuses on shapes and colors, not being consciously aware that she is painting a tree or a flower. Debra lets the colors and values she places on the surface tell the story. One of Debra's favorite viewer comments was in response to one of her sunflower motif painting, " How can you not be happy when you look at this?" She says it truly reflects the reason she paints. "Painting is mental and physical therapy for me. When I paint I get a spiritual high that erases any pains or worries I have," says Debra, who is currently in remission from Rheumatoid Arthritis. "Painting makes me happy because I really look when I paint, I'm forced to study the subtle nuances of life and appreciate each one."

In 1999, in an attempt to bring balance to her pain racked body, Debra put down her brush and picked up a palette knife. Her goal was to eliminate the use of toxic chemicals used to clean brushes in her studio. That choice has been positive on both a physical and professional level. Her health has returned and her work truly entered a new dimension. Whether working in the outdoors or in her home studio, Debra wields her chosen oil painting tool, the palette knife, with gusto. Debra avoids defining her work as a certain style. What she likes about her work is that it is hers, her own signature and her own voice.

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