Expressionist painter and printmaker Deborah Williams Remington creates hard-edge abstractions that suggest a wide variety of subject matter including Japanese calligraphy, automobile parts, and bones of human beings. Her work reflects two ongoing influences, which are her several years spent in the Orient studying calligraphy and her immersion in action painting when she was a student in San Francisco.
Remington was born in Haddonfield, New Jersey, where her father was a stockbroker and her mother an intelligent person who had much association with illustrators. Her father died when she was young, and the family went to California where she attended high school in Pasadena. She enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute and became part of the Bay Area Figurative movement, the West Coast version of New York's Abstract Expressionism. Teachers included David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and Clyfford Still, leaders of the Bay Area style.
Becoming part of the Beatnik scene, she ran the Six Gallery with several other artists, and this place was the gathering spot of leading-edge artists and poets including Allen Ginsberg who gave readings there that were shocking to many persons.
However, Remington became weary of Abstract Expressionism, perceiving that paintings in that style had little distinction, one from the other. Reaching for a completely different discipline, she went to the Orient where she lived in Japan with a Japanese family, learned the language, and studied calligraphy with Toyoda Senseil. For her, this immersion resulted in focus on the reality of objects, and refinement and control in the execution. However, her Eastern travels ended when she nearly drowned in India in the Ganges River, while she was working as a cook with a technological team. Coming this close to death, she decided it was time to focus her life on her career.
She returned to San Francisco, supported herself as a waitress, and devoted herself to creating a painting style that was uniquely her own. Her mature style combines thick paint and detailed images, strong contrasts of light and dark, and a limited palette. These paintings "can best be described as having a porthole effect---one seems to be looking through a central opening at mysterious light spaces that suggest sea, sky, and infinity, and yet seem to reverse themselves and become a flat mirror..." (Rubinstein 334).
In 1965, Remington moved to New York City, where she lives today (2003). In addition to painting, she has also been an art instructor in California at the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of California at Davis, and at Cooper Union in New York.
The Newport Harbor Art Museum in California gave Remington a 1984 retrospective exhibition. Deborah Remington worked with color lithography during 1973 to 1980 in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Tamarind Institute.
National Academy of Design, N.Y., Benjamin Altman Award, 178th Annual Exhibition, 2003
Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 1999
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Hassam & Speicher Purchase, 1988
Guggenheim Fellowship, 1984
National Endowment Fellowship, 1979
Tamarind Fellowship, Artist-In-Residence, Fall, 1973
Elected to the National Academy, New York, 1999
Interviewed by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1972 and 2004
Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, 1962
San Francisco Museum of Art, 1964
Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, 1965
Bykert Gallery, New York, 1967
Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris, 1968
Bykert Gallery, New York, 1969
Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris, 1971
Obelisk Gallery, Boston, 1971
Pyramid Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1973
Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris, 1973
Bykert Gallery, New York, 1974
Brooke Alexander, Inc., New York, 1974
Michael Berger Gallery, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1974
Pyramid Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1976
Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, 1976
Hamilton Gallery, New York, 1977
Portland Center for the Visual Arts, Portland, Oregon, 1977
Museum, University of Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, 1977
Art Gallery, Miami Dade Community, 1978 College, South Campus, Miami, 1978
Michael Berger Gallery, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1979
Bonfoey Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio, 1980
Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, 1982
Ramon Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1983
Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, Ca., 1983
Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, Ca., 1984
Adams-Middleton Gallery, Dallas, Texas, 1984
Museum, San Jose State University, San Jose, Ca., 1984
Ianuzzi Gallery, Phoenix, Az., 1985
Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, 1987
Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca., 1988
Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris, 1992
Select Group Exhibitions
1967 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Painting, Whitney Museum of Art, NY, December 13, 1967- February 4, 1968
1972 Annual Exhibition: Contemporary American Painting, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, January 25- March 19, 1972
1965 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Whitney Museum of Art, NY, December 8- Jan30, 1966
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Boymans Museum, Rotterdam, Holland
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
Centre d'Art et de Culture George Pompidou, Paris
San Francisco Museum of Art, California
Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA.
Phoenix Museum of Art, Phoenix, AZ.
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI.
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana
Auckland Museum, New Zealand
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
Aachenbach Foundation, San Francisco, CA.
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT.
Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, CA.
Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro,
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio
Museum of Art, University of California, Berkeley, CA.
Museum of Art, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M.
Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA.
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champagne, 1L.
Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
SamCleveuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL.
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE.
New York Public Library, N.Y., N.Y.
Bryn Mawr College Art Gallery, Bryn Mawr, PA.
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, Utah
Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA.
University of Texas-Pan American's Permanent Collection, Charles & Dorothy Clark Collection
National Academy of Design, New York, N.Y.
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, La Jolla, CA
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA
Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK
Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ
Monday - Friday
9:00 am - 5:30 pm
Evenings & weekends
by appointment
Monday - Friday: 9:00 am - 5:30 pm
Evenings & Weekends
by appointment
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