Artist, Deborah Rehmat, has lived in Keighley for over 10 years. During 40 years of professional work as an artist, she drew from a wide range of visual art media, including graphic design and illustration, painting, photography, fashion and accessory design, jewellery making, and textile art (see example above). She says of her art:
There are lots of ways all my different areas of work have overlapped, but there are common denominators: the first is landscape, nature, and the seasons; another would the interplay between fragility and strength, especially as things age and deteriorate, and the third is wellbeing – the search for ways in which we all try, in one way or another, to find wholeness and healing.
Gala Apple, Roca & Conference Pears’. Image: see artist’s website, below.
Deborah initially studied Graphic Design at Canterbury College of Art (1972 – 74), but changed direction and continued her art studies at Goldsmith’s College, London, graduating in 1978 with a BA (hons) in Fine Art (textiles).
Early on during my time at Goldsmiths I did a course of life drawing with Harry Thubron, that he taught with his wife Elma, which woke me up to what drawing is all about. It was a shock – an abrupt, radical change of understanding and an experience that has stayed with me ever since.
‘Ammonite, from Whitby’. Image: see artist’s website, below.
(There is a biographical portrait and tribute to Harry Thubron via the artist’s website, see below.)
For much of her working life as a professional artist, Deborah and her husband owned and ran their own studio/gallery in London, where her work was exhibited and sold. After moving to Yorkshire, Deborah’s jewellery was sold at a number of shops and galleries in the region up until her retirement from full-time freelance professional work.
Peace necklace. Image: see artist’s website, below.
Drawing has been a consistent interest for her over the years. Deborah is a member of the worldwide Urban Sketchers organisation (and its local chapter, Yorkshire Urban Sketchers) whose members sketch on location and whose aim is ‘to show the world, one drawing at a time’. In 2016 she started a reportage sketching project documenting the progress of the Heritage Lottery funded restoration project in Cliffe Castle Park, following the changes made to the landscape and recording the day to day work on the building sites (example below).
Restoration of Dark Lane, Cliffe Castle park grounds. Image: see artist’s website, below.
Deborah has said of this project:
My greatest interest lies in simply documenting what goes on around me by drawing whatever and whenever I can – hence the sketching project of the restoration project at Cliffe Castle Park, which is practically on my doorstep.
Artist’s website: https://deborahrehmat.wordpress.com/