About the Artist

Deborah L. Friedman

Deborah L. Friedman (b. Los Angeles, California), known professionally as D. L. Friedman, has been drawing and painting since she was young. Deborah earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in printmaking from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her BFA thesis project consisted of a series of lithographic portraits and pencil drawings inspired by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites.

She has worked and exhibited in a variety of media, including pencil, graphite, pastel, and oils. She also ran a decorative painting business, with emphasis on custom-painted furniture and floorcloths. Her subject matter has evolved over the years, with realism the one common tie among many different themes: still-lifes, large greenhouse interiors, miniature landscapes in oil, and, more recently, bird drawings and animal portraiture.

Deborah has received fellowships to several artists' colonies; it was at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire that she met the composer David Hoffman, also a MacDowell Fellow. They married in 1985. She now lives with her family and two cats in Massachusetts, and when not working in her studio, she loves to be outside, garden, watch birds and nature, cook, ice dance, and travel.

Deborah credits her mother with inspiring her strong love of the natural world. Summers spent on her grandparents' wheat farm in the heart of Texas provided early exposure to a great variety of wildlife, including bats, armadillos, horned lizards, and rattlesnakes. "Whether it's finding the wings of a luna moth in my garden, growing vegetables in my community garden, or observing catbirds and great blue herons at the pond near my house," says Deborah, "I am constantly amazed by the natural world and strive to pass on some of this beauty and joy in my artwork."

More recently, Deborah has been interested in exploring ways of looking at stones as a subject matter.  This series started with an experiment during the summer of 2009 to produce ten small drawings investigating different ways of interpreting stones. During the course of these drawings, several ideas unfolded that led to totally unexpected and new imagery, most notable being stones placed in clear glass containers and filled with water.  The concepts presented by the distortion of glass, light, color, shadow and shape continue to fascinate the artist and provide endless challenges.