Artist of the Week: Debra Collis

PopUp Painting’s artist of the week is PopUp Painting team member Debra Collis.

Debra Collis is an artist based in London. Collis’ work follows a figurative tradition – making predominantly observational works. Drawing from life, including the figure and portraiture, is common practice in the artists work. Collis uses a variety of mixed media from ink, pencil, pastels to create her work.
Currently, the artist is working on mosaic art and is interested in the blurring of boundaries between working from direct observation to playing with tiles, materials, surfaces, and developing them into more simplified motifs merging contemporary and traditional techniques. The artist is influenced by a number of styles such as Asian and Islamic Art, and is increasingly inspired by decorative Art Nouveau and mosaic artists such as Gaudi.

The artist has completed a web design course, worked with art education projects in Peru, taught art to children of all ages in schools and in the community, as well as teaching mosaic classes.

We will be featuring Debra’s work all week on our Facebook and Twitter pages, but in the meantime here are some of our favourite works by the artist: