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Deborah Barnett

Research & Fine Art

A study of embodied intuition and the future of the book.

Pages serve not as containers for text but as the text itself. The material is pierced, misshapen, deconstructed, and stitched back together—much like the ways we mend our emotional wounds while the body remembers what caused them.

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In Exhibition

Barnett's current work will be featured in the solo exhibition 'Leaf Love: emerging : disrupting' at 183Gallery in Toronto, opening 17 April 2026. This evolution of 'experimental skins' continues through her foundational 'Leaf Love' series and the French Letter Society at Someone Editions, where she acts as the bridge between a poet’s internal word and its material realization.

About

Barnett’s career is marked by a lineage of tactile storytelling that recently saw two pieces from her 'Revelations' series sold at Marisa Newman Projects' exhibition" Marvelous Dualities" in New York (2024). These collaborative works with Susana Wald are part of a trajectory validated by her 2021 MFA at OCADU, where she discovered her private studio explorations mirrored the pioneers in After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art.

 

Her path to the Revelations project (See:1236-susana sale in 2009) evolved through the 'Bruegel' and Angel series, and the foundational 'My Breast Friend' 3D paintings—all born from an initial eight-year period of isolated studio work and her debut 3D pregnancy casts "Tell Tale Torsos" at the Illuminary Gallery.

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Foundational Series

Includes, in reverse order: My Breast Friend, The Angel Series, The "Breugal Paintings", and Tell Tale Torsos, 3D paintings of pregnant women.

Hiccough: Dermal Fragments is an ongoing investigation into experimental skins, where the leaf acts as a surrogate for the human body. Organic veins become sites of memory and trauma and foliage evolves through diverse material expressions, capturing a permanent, tactile record of touch and time.

FLS: Hiccough

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My Breast Friend: Sculptural Testimonies is a series of 3D paintings featuring casts of imaginary breasts that explore the power of the female form as a sacred canvas. These works testify that any image, when placed upon the breast, adopts the profound ethos and deep significance conferred by the body itself.

My Breast Friend

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10 Steps to Gravity: The Angel Series is a narrative series of paintings documenting the metaphysical acclimatization of the artist as angel. Through ten distinct stages, the subject—with wings for arms—navigates the transition from the ethereal to the physical, learning to inhabit the weight and grace of gravity.

 The Angel Series

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Featured Works

Learn more about Deborah Barnett's works and collections.

FLS: LEAF LOVE

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TELLTALE TORSO

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MY BREAST FRIEND

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JUDITH'S SWORD

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THE ANGEL SERIES

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BREUGAL PAINTINGS

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