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Green Heron - 2024,
acrylic on cast acrylic, 12.25 x 7.25 x .75 inches
Exhibition - NEW MEMBERS
An exhibition feature AAA’s most recently inducted members
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.
Essay -THE NATURE OF TIME: ONE YEAR OF BIRD MIGRATION, by Debra Ramsay
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
Exhibition Catalog - DEBRA RAMSAY: FLYING COLORS
Digital Catalog Available
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.
Exhibition - DEBRA RAMSAY: 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.
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.
Sunday, May 19th
2 PM - 5 PM
Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ
Online Feature - A FIELD GUIDE TO BIRDS
Opens at the Garrison Art Center on April 13th, 2024
In “Two Coats of Paint”
April 13 – May 5, 2024
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.
Blog - CREATING ABSTRACT PAINTINGS OF MIGRATORY BIRDS
Discussion with Debra Ramsay on 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.
Ruby-crowned Kinglet - 2022
Acrylic on cast acrylic panel
5.25 x 8.25 x .75 inches
Exhibition - CIRCUMSTANCE OF AIR
A solo exhibition at Starr Suites
February 10 – March 17, 2024
Opening reception Saturday, February 10, 6-8pm
281 Starr St 1R, Brooklyn, NY
Fri-Sun, 12-6pm and by appt
310-895-5171
macrae.semans@gmail.com
@starr.suites
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.
Project - 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.
Golden-winged Warblers (male and female) - 2023,
Each 8.25 x 5.25 x .75 inches.
Acrylic on cast acrylic panel.
Newest work in the studio - GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLERS, male and female
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
Group Exhibition - Yi Gallery
Adagio: A Summer Viewing Room
Now showing by appointment-only through September 1st at Yi Gallery in Brooklyn , NY
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.
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.