Deborah Arnold
Biography
My lifelong interest in theatre production and visual art blossomed into a full-time career as a visual artist after I attended the Ottawa School of Art and trained with a stone carver in Italy for three years. Since then my practice has evolved to include found materials and metal casting, large scale outdoor work and personal memorials for lifelong friends. My work always holds great emotional weight for me personally, both through material and symbolism. I am awed by the process of creativity that stone work offers me. I feel a fundamental connection to stone, as it forms the very earth I walk on and which nourishes me.
Artist Statement
My carving process mirrors the nature of these stones. Each stone is at first unyielding, as if my work continues the stone’s evolution. A classic form of nature is the universal egg form – so elegant and mysterious, fragile and strong, are symbolic of beginnings, rebirth, fertility, creativity, and nourishment – both for body and soul. During my communication with the stone, I begin to feel as if I am receiving an echo of the time when it was formed yet I struggle to describe the bond and the battle between the organic world and our industrial culture.
