NEW MEMBERS, an exhibition featuring AAA’s most recently inducted members
Green Heron, acrylic on cast acrylic panel, 2024
This exhibition not only highlights the innovative works of these new member artists but also continues the organization’s 89-year legacy of fostering abstract art and the communities around it, thereby extending the legacy of both non-objective art and American Abstract Artists.
March 8–29, 2025
Opening Saturday, March 8, 3–6p
Gallery MC
545 West 52nd St, New York, NY
Gallery Hours: Fri–Sun 1–6p
Essay Published in Center for Humans & Nature Press
I’m honored to have been invited to contribute to the digital community at the Center for Humans & Nature Press. The Center is home to a press and farm that explore in-depth and diverse perspectives about what it means to be human in an interconnected world.
Click on this link to reach the essay The Nature of Time: One Year of Bird Migration
Debra Ramsay: Flying Colors Digital Catalog Available
A free digital edition of the printed catalog is available here.
A free digital catalog is available with this link.
My solo exhibition at the Hunterdon Art Museum, Flying Colors, translates the concept of time into an abstraction of bird species migrating through Central Park, the plumage colors of these migrating birds mark specific moments in a particular location. Each painting serves as both a time data point and a devotional object, paying homage to that species.
Additional programming in conjunction with the exhibition includes a Mindfulness Birding Workshop guided by Holly Merker on Aug 24th For details and registration for the event visit here.
Flying Colors Opens at Hunterdon Art Museum
Join us this Sunday, May 19th, for the grand opening of "Debra Ramsay: Flying Colors" in our River Gallery!
Debra Ramsay's installation evokes the experience of birdwatching, tracking various species that migrate through New York City‘s Central Park over the course of a year.
Painted on translucent acrylic panels, the colors appear to shift as you move through the gallery.
The multisensory installation includes bird songs and calls, offering a dynamic and ephemeral experience akin to spotting birds in their habitat.
Date: Sunday, May 19th
Time: 2 PM - 5 PM
Location: Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ
Debra will be speaking in the gallery, sharing insights into her creative process and the inspirations behind her stunning works.
The opening will coincide with a vibrant block party filled with activities and entertainment for all ages.
Come for the art, stay for the fun!
Make sure to bring your friends and family
A Field Guide to Birds opens at the Garrison Art Center on April 13th, 2024
April 13 – May 5, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 13, 2024, 5 - 7 pm Artist Talk: May 5, 3:30 - 4:30 pm
Together, these paintings by Debra Ramsay and Leslie Roberts constitute an unconventional field guide to birds. Each of Ramsay’s reductive compositions on translucent slabs captures the plumage colors of a single bird species. Ramsay and Roberts translate ornithological data into sensory experiences that parallel their avian subjects' vivid color and kinetic delicacy.
Roberts’s panels hold written lists of bird families or species, organized by color or habitat, and diagrammed into pattern-like formations.
For Debra Ramsay's paintings, printed QR codes are available, allowing viewers to listen to recordings of the sounds of each bird, and to view photographs of it. These auditory and pictorial resources add extra sensory layers to visitors' experience of this work.
A discussion with BirdNote
I recently enjoyed working with people at BirdNote.org on an interview and a blog post about my Migration series, abstractly depicting birds migrating through Central Park, in NYC.
You can listen here to the interview. More in-depth content is on their blog post, available here.
Circumstance of Air, a solo exhibition at Starr Suites
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
February 10 – March 17, 2024
Opening reception Saturday, February 10, 6-8pm
Starr Suites is pleased to present ‘Circumstance of Air’, an exhibition of new and selected work by New York-based artist Debra Ramsay opening Saturday, February 10 and running through Sunday, March 17, 2024.
This exhibition presents selections from Ramsay’s ongoing, ‘Migration’ series, in which time is measured by documenting the plumage colors of birds encountered migrating through Central Park, NY. Rendered on translucent acrylic panels and displayed freestanding on laminated shelves, the works serve as altar-like objects of devotion- indexing and embodying temporal and spatial passage, perceptual shift and a personal experience of the natural world. Seen collectively, they map an abstracted tour through the artist’s immersive engagement in aviary lifestyles.
Debra Ramsay (b. Hudson, NY) is an artist living and working in New York City. She earned her BA from Brooklyn College, NY. Ramsay has exhibited her work internationally for over three decades, including in Denmark, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia. Solo exhibitions in the United States include the Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton, NJ, 2024, Starr Suites, Brooklyn, NY, Brattleboro Museum in Brattleboro, VT, 2017; Odetta Gallery, Brooklyn, and 57 W 57th Arts, NY, 2016. Additional recent exhibitions include Field Guide to Birds at the Garrison Art Center, Garrison, NY, 2024, Mere Reflection at Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY, 2022, in 2021: Yi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, (de)coding at the Visual Arts Center of NJ and Embody at the Ely Center for Contemporary Art in New Haven. The Center for Humans and Nature Press will digitally publish Ramsay’s The Nature of Time, One Year of Bird Migrations in the spring, of 2024.
281 Starr St 1R, Brooklyn, NY
Fri-Sun, 12-6pm and by appt
310-895-5171
@starr.suites
Walking with... a project linking walking and creativity
I was happy to be invited to participate in Clementine Butler-Gallie’s 2023 project Re-Routing, by contributing to Walking with. “Walking With… is an archive of conversations with artists, curators and cultural practitioners exploring the various ways walking permeates their projects and practices.
These short conversations act as a form of walk as studio visit - a space for thoughts to meander, ideas in progress to be shared and past projects to be reflected on.”
It gave me the opportunity to revisit a favorite project, Landscape As Time, conceived during my first residency at the Golden Foundation in New Berlin, NY where I learned of their color mixing program Virtual Paint Mixer. Details about the evolution of the Landscape project are linked here. Additional images from the series are available here.
Newest work in the studio: Golden-Winged Warblers, female and male
Golden-winged Warblers have suffered one of the steepest population declines of any songbird species in the past 45 years. Golden-winged Warblers breed in tangled, shrubby habitats such as regenerating clearcuts, wet thickets, and tamarack bogs. They often move into nearby woodland when the young have fledged. They spend winters in open woodlands and shade-coffee plantations of Central and South America.
Male and female. Each 8.25 x 5.25 x .75 inches. Acrylic on cast acrylic panel. 2023
Adagio: A Summer Viewing Room
Now showing by appointment-only through September 1st at Yi Gallery in Brooklyn , NY
You can sign up for an appointment, online, here. A special group presentation - on view both online and in the gallery space - highlighting select inventory works by gallery artists.
With this exhibition Yi Gallery continues their tradition of providing an open and well-informed platform for conceptually rigorous and formally inventive projects where the poetic and critical program prioritizes context and discovery.
https://gallery-yi.com/exhibitions/30-a-d-a-g-i-o-summer-viewing-room/
American Abstract Artists
I’m honored to be elected an American Abstract Artists organization member. American Abstract Artists is a historic, democratically run, non-profit arts organization based in New York City. Founded in 1936 in New York City when abstract art was met with strong critical resistance. Its publishing, panels, and lectures provide a forum for discussion and give abstract art theoretical support in the United States. AAA contributed to the development and acceptance of abstract art in the United States. American Abstract Artists is one of the few artists’ organizations to survive the Great Depression and continue into the 21st century.
Installation images from 'a clearing' at NIAD Art Center
The exhibition, curated by Mel Prest continues through May 20th. There will be additional programming around the exhibition soon and I’ll share the details when I have them. The online catalog can be viewed here.
Catalog available for 'a clearing'
The online catalog for the exhibition ‘a clearing’ is now available to view here.
from “Where I Find Myself” series, Twilight & Dawn…
acrylic on cast acrylic panels, each 12 inches square, 2022
Wood Thrush
The newest member of the Migration series has hatched.
“Conservation status: Near Threatened Population decreasing. The wood thrush is the official bird of the District of Columbia. One of the first songsters to be heard in the morning and among the last in the evening, the male sings his haunting ee-oh-lay song from an exposed perch in the midstory or lower canopy.” ~ The Cornell Lab
Wood Thrush
5.25 x 8.25 x .75, acrylic on cast acrylic, 2023
a clearing, at the NIAD Art Center, Richmond, CA, April-May
Twilight and Dawn, 4_9 3_1_H, 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on cast acrylic
I’m delighted to participate in “a clearing” at NIAD, a progressive, inclusive art center. A selection from my series, Where I Find Myself, will be shown.
Curator Mel Prest: “Walking down a narrow path, you're surprised as you reach a clearing.
This sudden openness makes you stop short and catch your breath as you begin to absorb the change in landscape.
Works in a clearing beckon, inviting you to enter.
a clearing artists include: Carlotta Rodriguez, Debra Ramsay, James Heartsill, Jeremy Burleson, Melissa Staiger, Prajakti Jayavant, Shante Robinson and Scott Malbaurn.
Each artist composes forms evolving from intuitive, rather than predetermined, thinking. In these works, the initial pattern elements break down and fall away, creating an opportunity for something unknown to arise. Overlapping and unpredictable shapes and colors create conversations, inviting viewers to come closer, soften their gaze, release expectations. Through a variety of materials, these artworks attain a color energy using vibrant hues and textures. Optical vibrations and textures rumble as deeper looking opens to a clearing. “
Migration Series continues
Extending my pursuit of using color as a way to show time, this ongoing series documents the plumage colors of birds migrating through Central Park in NYC during a year. Choosing three colors from each subject, they offer an essence of that species. Before beginning a painting, I study the call/song and movements of the particular bird with a desire to demonstrate fidelity to that species. The bands and blocks of color on translucent slabs of plexiglass mimic some of my experiences as a novice birdwatcher; a color appears but then seems to disappear as the bird moves, and a color not seen suddenly appears as the viewer moves. The interaction of materials selected for this project allows the colors to be visibly separate in some places and optically mixed in others. Juxtaposing areas of color with unpainted areas of the translucent panel references the air-like realm in which the birds exist. The size and shape of the color blocks on the panel reference that bird’s characteristics, such as the long thin aigrette feathers of the Great Egret, which appear only during its breeding season.
Great Egret, 10 x 24 x .75 inches, acrylic on cast acrylic, 2022
Painting on Porch
I’m honored to be included in this publication of a delightfully eclectic collection of artworks experienced from a specific space. Forward by Al Ravitz. Concept and curation by Sue Ravitz. Design by Flat Fix. 2021
Mere Reflection at Marquee Projects
Canada Warbler 3, 5.25 x 8.25 x .75, acrylic on cast acrylic, 2021
MARQUEE PROJECTS is thrilled to return from our two-month winter break and begin our 2022 season with a group exhibition titled Mere Reflection featuring paintings by Mary Bucci McCoy, Debra Ramsay and Jon Rollins.
I was delighted to exhibit my work in this charming space in Bellport, NY along with Mary and Jon.
Select 6 Exhibition, online
Thrilled to be included:
“Garvey|Simon is pleased to announce Select 6, the sixth annual exhibition of work by emerging and mid-career artists chosen by director Elizabeth K. Garvey.
In the progressive spirit of the Artist Review program, Garvey will be producing Select 6 online with Artsy.net and selected works on view by appointment on the Upper West Side. By using this vetted online marketplace, the exhibition will have an extended duration, and the opportunity to reach an increasingly global audience. Though these artworks represent a diverse array of modes and aesthetics, they are united by their unwavering attention to detail, and unmistakable presence of the artist’s hand.”
For further information, to see more images, or to schedule an in-person or Zoom viewing, please visit Garvey Simon or contact Elizabeth Garvey at liz@garveysimon.com or 917-796-2146.
Remote Reconnection
Carole Calo Gallery, Stonehill College, 320 Washington St., Easton, MA 02357
I’m pleased to be included in this exhibition looking at the perception of time during the pandemic. Time, as well as light and color, have long been a concern in my work.
There will be 25 paintings from my series “A week in Times” in the exhibition.
I will be present for the opening and panel discussion on November 17th, from 4-6:30.