biography

Deb Karpman received her MFA in 2009 from Umass Amherst and her BA from Colgate University in 2005. She also holds a Doctorate in Education from UCLA. She has held solo exhibitions at Edreich Architecture, Second Row Studios, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Montevallo, and two person exhibitions at Beta Pictoris Gallery (Birmingham, AL), Las Vegas Contemporary Art Center (Las Vegas, NV), Lawndale Art Center (Houston, Texas), Arts Place (Portland, Indiana), Essex Art Center (Lawrence, Massachusetts), SCA Contemporary (Albuquerque, New Mexico).

Her work has been included in dozens of group shows including Craft Alliance (St. Louis, MO), Manifest Gallery (Cincinnati, OH), Site: Brooklyn (NY, NY), UNC Asheville, Beta Pictoris Gallery (Birmingham, AL), Trifecta Gallery (Las Vegas, NV), Johnson Center for the Arts (Troy, AL), Massey University (Wellington, New Zealand), Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA), Ferris University (Big Rapids, MI), RISD (Providence, RI), and many more.

Karpman was an artist-in-residence at Stonehouse Residency for Contemporary Art in Miramonte, CA and was accepted to programs at Vermont Studio Center, Can Serrat, and Nes Artist Residency. In 2022-2023, she was an American Council on Education Fellow at Colby College.

Karpman works primarily in drawing and collage, focusing on themes such as materiality, fragmentation and reconstruction. Her work is influenced by the Bauhaus artist movement, and she looks to blend everyday, mundane visual images into extraordinary assemblages.

Her pieces invite the viewer to look at the layered surface (what is cut, what is drawn, what is hidden). Her work also investigates the structure and disruption between formal systems (grid, repeated modular forms), and intuitive/gestural action such as torn edges and uneven overlaps, seeking both order amid chaos and stability among the unpredictable moments in life.

She also creates free instructional drawing videos which she shares on YouTube and TikTok with more than 150,000 online learners each month. She is passionate about expanding access to art.

Her videos provide introductory instruction on a range of drawing topics for both beginning and intermediate students. She is currently also working on founding an art curriculum and learning company called Chiaroscuro.

She lives in Rancho Cucamonga, CA with her family.

For more information please contact: deb.karpman at gmail dot com