DEBRA KRAKOW is the second artist to be featured in our Complete Artist series, Debra Krakow, shares her multiple creative selves with Fertile Ground, featuring her paintings, pottery, wire and fiber arts.
Fertile Ground November 1-30
Opening reception Friday Nov. 1 from 5-7pm
“The Complete Artist invitation validated what I was already doing and energized me to delve deeper into painting, pottery and fibre, and to look for opportunities where they could interconnect. Painted and sewn purses, Ceramic bowls with grapevine rims and felted chicks with wire legs. I also loved carrying the homesteading theme across different media: Chicks in paint-ings and felt, cows in paintings and a ceramic sculpture, an egg basket in a painting and ceramic eggs, chickens in paintings and sculpted in wire.”
HOMESTEADING
A passion since buying a 40-acre hayfield on Wolfe Island when we were in our 20s and moving from inner city Montreal to this rural farming community. Love the idea of selfsuficiency that comes from building our own house, growing and raising our own food, and learning traditional homesteading crafts – quilting, knitting and crochet, basket weaving, pottery and most recently, weaving on a loom.
I thrive on continual learning – the initial excitement of trying something new, and then the opportunity to delve deeper and develop a degree of mastery. The intellectual challenge and the hand learning are both essential components of creativity. No matter the craft, the essential skills are the same: getting to know the material well enough to understand its potential, becoming adept with the basic tools, gaining proficiency in the traditional ways and then bringing my own vision and sensibility to it to make it uniquely mine.
Love of the traditional is not so much nostalgia as an awareness of the value of handcrafting, both for the maker and the person who gets to use that object, knowing it was made by another’s hands. It’s an essential form of communication, foundational to culture and community, which is lost when we use manufactured goods imported from factories far away. Every painting and handcrafted object is unique and bears the mark of the maker.
I’m strongly drawn to natural materials – clay, wool, cotton, leather, wood. My use of acrylic paints is an anomaly, and I may eventually take up oils instead. For now, though, I feel at home with acrylics and find their versatility liberating. I can layer them up quickly, use light over dark, work in thick, buttery strokes or fluid glazes, in any order, and collage other materials onto a painting at any stage. While I’m generally trying to reduce my use of plastics, I’d have a hard time giving up my beloved acrylic paints.
Photo credit: Linda Krakow Eaman
ENVIRONMENT
The life we’ve created for ourselves on Wolfe Island has allowed me and my husband to have an amazing quality of life on a modest income. We are true do-it-yourselfers. We built our own house, raise chickens and turkeys, grow a big vegetable garden and cook everything from scratch. We source what we can at thrift stores and when something needs fixing, we usually manage to do it ourselves. During the years that we worked full-time and raised our family, it was sometimes a struggle to find the time and energy for art and music. But now, with our son and daughter making their own way in the world, the mortgage paid off and some savings in the bank, we have the time and freedom to pursue our creative endeavours.
Rural living is a constant source of inspiration. We go for long walks every day and the quality of light over the fields is never the same. As the trees have grown up around our house, our yard has become a haven for wildlife. Our chickens and turkeys make great painting subjects, as do the cows across the road. We love hiking in the woods, and forests are a recurring theme in my work.
BRIEF ARTISTIC HISTORY
I came into art through the back door. Determined to be self-sufficient, I went into Architecture rather than Fine Art but my favourite subject, by far, was life drawing. We had a live model once a week for three years. The class would also go on week-long sketching trips at the end of every summer before school resumed. That’s where I got my foundation, learning to draw from careful observation. It was also my introduction to watercolours, which was my principal medium when I started out.
I continued to paint in my spare time while working as an architect. I considered going back to school to do a master’s in fine arts, so I took courses in printmaking, sculpture and painting to round out my portfolio. But after moving from Montreal to Wolfe Island and starting to raise a family, that goal fell by the wayside. Architectural work was less creative than I had hoped, and I dreamt of the day I’d be able to quit my job and become a full-time artist. Five years ago, that possibility finally became a reality.
Photo credit: Linda Krakow
MATERIALS & MEDIUMS
Painting is my core creative work. It’s the most challenging thing I do and can be the most rewarding. There are very few constraints in painting and unlike pottery or weaving, no standard way of working that provides a reasonable assurance of success. I love the tactile side of painting – what you might call the craft of it: the buttery viscosity as I mix colours on my palette, the swoosh of a silicone wedge as it paints a wide swath across cotton canvas, he soft textures that form as the painting builds, layer by layer.
In moving from urban Montreal to rural Wolfe Island, I became enamored with country living and learning traditional homesteading skills: house building, farming, gardening, and textile crafts. I learned to sew and quilt, then to knit and crochet, and have taken workshops in basket weaving and willow furniture making. Weaving was a natural next step, and I recently acquired a 45” four-harness floor loom, which I’m just learning to use.
Working with fibre is meditative – repetitive but requiring focus and concentration, the perfect way to end the day. I’m relatively new to pottery and there are days when I just can’t get things to work on the wheel. But when it goes well, it’s magical. The clay is incredibly elastic when it’s wet, and yet a finished pot has such a solid, earthy feel. I’m working on a line of versatile farmhouse pottery that can move from garden to kitchen to table. I’ve designed the collection with clean, sculptural lines and a rustic white glaze. The coiled handles on antique tinware and cast-iron vessels inspired me to experiment with wire handles on my pots. After trying a variety of gauges and materials, I found myself with a stash of unused wire and decided to get creative with it. Sculpting with wire feels a lot like drawing, but in three dimensions. Like a pencil line, the wire can be scribbly or straight, and incredibly expressive.
Painting is where I can best express my creative voice, because it’s where my work is most unique and individual. It’s also where I’m most experienced, and I expect that my ceramics and fibre art will become more personal and creative as my skills develop. I love finding opportunities to bring disparate materials together: fuzzy felted wool next to smooth shiny wire, or glossy white ceramic against dark fibrous grapevine. The contrast in form, colour and texture enhances both components. These juxtapositions are also a technical challenge, requiring me to think creatively about how to attach them securely together. My work is connected by a consistent colour palette and recurring visual elements such as dot grids and gingham, chickens and cows. Homesteading provides endless subject matter for my paintings and gave rise to many of the traditional crafts I’m now exploring.
ARTWORK
ARTIST BIO
I am an artist, artisan and architect. My husband and I left Montreal 30 years ago to put down roots and raise our family on Wolfe Island, and we've never looked back.
Embracing rural life motivates me to learn traditional homesteading skills: home building, farming and gardening, quilting and knitting, weaving and pottery. The family farm provides endless subject matter for paintings, as do our hikes through the woods and fields.
I’ve developed my artistic practice through explorations in drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, fibre arts and ceramics. I've had solo shows in Montreal, Toronto, Kingston and New York State, and my work is held in private collections throughout North America and beyond.
I am represented by Koyman Galleries in Ottawa and am a member of the Kingston Potters Guild, the Kingston Handloom Weavers and Spinners and the Wolfe Island Gallery.