Deborah Dewit Marchant

Rest, 2005. Pastel, 18 x 24"

The Evening Paper, 2006. Pastel 16 x 24"

Friday Nights, 2006. Pastel 23 x 27"

A great Portland, OR area artist (I believe she lives in West Linn), Deborah DeWit Marchant works mostly in pastel but also does a lot of oil painting. She is also an accomplished photographer. I discovered her art cards at Annie Bloom's Books in Portland but actually met her in person some years back at the Sausalito Art Festival, it was such a pleasure! About 2 years ago I went to her show at Gallery Fraga in Winslow on Bainbridge Island, WA. It was a lovely show and so nice to finally see her work up close in a well-lit gallery setting.

"Born in 1956, Deborah DeWit Marchant is a 5th generation artist, a descendant of Dutch illustrators and painters. As a child, her father's career in the international grain business took her family to live on 4 continents and in 6 different states, instilling in her curiosity, wanderlust and a zest for knowledge. She started taking photographs at 16 but entered Cornell University as an Agronomy major. After 2 years her interest in photography and art led her astray and she took to the road in search of imagery and experience, traveling extensively in her 20's. Self-taught, she has been making images since that time, beginning with photographs - both black and white and color- and moving later into pastel and oils. Her work resides in private, public and museum collections across the country, and has been used on the covers of books and magazines, in calendars and on cards. She is also the author of Traveling Light: Chasing an Illuminated Life, a photo-illustrated written chronicle of her young years as a photographer and developing artist. Deborah and her husband Robert live with their 3 cats in an old red house in a suburb of Portland, Oregon."

(Taken from the back flap of the book, Deborah DeWit Marchant In the Presence of Books, intro and text by Kim Stafford. William, James & Co., 2007.)