Deborah Luken

"I was born in the Bronx and raised in Queens N.Y. I attended the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan, studied at the Art Student’s League and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, with a BFA in Painting and I am a graduate of the Parsons School of Design's Master of Fine Arts Program, in Painting. I have shown extensively in the New York metropolitan area, and have had work at the Delaware Art Museum and the Heckscher Museum of Art. The New York Times has reviewed my work on numerous occasions. I am married with three daughters, one of whom is disabled with Cerebral Palsy. 

Art does not exist in a vacuum. No matter how far back in history we look, or what archaeology reveals to us, art has always carried meaning—even if that meaning is simply art itself. My current work excavates recent events and movements that have driven life in America into an untenable impasse, revealing our daily swirl of life now steeped in chaos. This series of paintings is an attempt to make sense of that condition.

In the Disasters of Wars series, inspired by Goya’s etchings The Disasters of War, I first go back to the book of those etchings given to me when I entered the High School of Art and Design at fourteen by my father, a liberator of concentration camps in WWII. This was bookended by a visit to the Prado, where I saw the full set up close when I was a graduate student at Parsons School of Design. Disasters exist in all forms of human discourse—global, national, regional, and personal. In any life, a disaster is likely to occur, and that disaster will always be of grave importance to the one experiencing it. In the framework of the rise of fascism, renewing my relationship with the Goya series reinforced the necessity of situating my work within the world we live in, and the urgency of making sense of it.

The Connections series is a bridge from Disasters of Wars to The Great Chain of Being series; small in number and pointed toward loss and recovery. Four Strong Winds That Blow Steady is for Julie and examines the loss of a friend through death. Now Is the Time explores the ability to resume life, grounded in the idea that the present moment - the now - is the most important time in any life. The Great Chain of Being series is an exploration of the chain of history and how the past devours the present. This is an ancient philosophy that delineated the place in society of everyone and everything, starting with the King being anointed by God. The succession of the monarch was determined by this chain; your position in the world was locked in by your lineage—until America said: “We the People”. In taking a look at the Great Chain from the vantage point of an American in a time of turmoil, the first chain is DNA through evolution in Chain Reaction, then civilization itself in Chain of Continuity, leading to our current situation which winds up with Chain of Fools. Links in the Chain fosters optimism and seeks to bring light out of darkness. Order does not always make sense to those outside the top of the pyramid; sometimes it only brings disaster, and sometimes it explains how we got here." - Deborah Luken