by Jasmine Hall, UMD Senior and Touchstone Intern
For Deb Furey, conversation is a requirement for the painting process.
“It’s really important that the work speaks back to me–somewhat of an interplay–back and forth–when I am working,” she states.
Furey, a mixed media painter, strikes a balance of realism and abstraction, as seen in her two concurrent styles. The first utilizes photography and collage with a combination paint media, while the second consists of large-scale, high contrast charcoal drawings of characters presenting various symbols of life and time. There is a spontaneity to Furey’s work, with many of her paintings being made in a short amount of time, without much pressure for realism. In Furey’s experience, focusing on hyperrealism often reduces the excitement and creativity for her.
“I am keenly interested in juxtaposing images, patterns–real-world and imaginary–to evoke emotions and moments in time,” she notes. “I also try very hard to listen to my own voice and not edit based on external expectations.”
Reaching this level of self-understanding in her process was not a short journey. Furey began her career as an artist at a young age. Once she displayed interest in painting and drawing, her mother put her in art lessons, enabling her to be in art shows and sell her first painting. Through many moves in high school, Furey found herself in Connecticut during her Junior year, studying under a local artist. This led to a residency that summer, which guided Furey to pursue art school for college.
After getting into prestigious art schools such as RISD and Pratt, Furey settled on Massachusetts College of Art and Design. For her two years at Mass Art, Furey studied interrelated media, which included video, sound, and other digital media tools. “Somewhere, in the midst of all that, I realized I needed to learn more about life and other educational pursuits before I had a point of view–a sense of what I wanted to say in my art,” she says.
This revelation led Furey to put her traditional artistic education on hold to develop a career in software development and animation. Furey began painting again in her late twenties, thoughdue to work and raising kids, she didn’t get involved in the gallery space until recently. Now, she’s driven to keep her art production steady.
“I paint a few days a week pretty consistently.” Furey states that sharing her artwork only adds to the enjoyment of painting. “I like to show it and I like to get people’s reaction.”
These audience reactions further contribute to the meaning of Furey’s work, with her semi-abstract characters only becoming more impactful with new interpretations placed upon them. Furey’s work incorporates cardboard, oil paint, and collage to create expressive scenes filled with dynamic figures. These bodies, often faceless and purposefully androgynous, allow for the freedom of Furey’s artistic process. It also makes much of her compositions open to interpretation, due to their lack of specificity.
“It’s a mirror in a way,” Furey states. “And if they work well, the pieces are evoking something in themselves.”
There is a power to this lack of gender in her figures. It’s an intentional disregard for binaries of gender, as well as binaries of time. These characters are dressed in clothing of a different historical period, many of them wearing crowns, ruffle collars, and holding scepters. There are no labels or boundaries to her figures, which adds to Furey’s artistic exploration. “I’m really interested in humans as humans and not girls and boys.”
Both of Furey’s styles, despite their differences, remain tied together in their spontaneous approach and how they act as a study of humanity. Furey only continues to expand on her existing work, aiming to create bigger and better visual experiences and depictions of her unusual ideas. It’s this spontaneity in life and in her practice that enables Furey to create the evocative artwork that engages her viewers.