BIO

Visual artist Debra Girard was born in Long Beach CA, relocating to Arizona with her family when she was 11. California left an indelible mark on her—particularly the areas of Long Beach and Lakewood, her old stomping grounds. As a child, she enjoyed frequent trips to The Nu-Pike, an old amusement park in Long Beach. She recalls with marked nostalgia this "seedy" side of town—with its musty tattoo parlors, and dark lounge bars where Exotica murals of nude figures and jungle cats came alive on the walls. The colorful characters, and rich, vivid sights and sounds live on in her most recent work—a “retro-biopic” digital homage.

Girard was recognized and highly regarded by the alternative art community, early on as an art student. Many of her early works were shown in local exhibitions while she pursued her studies in Phoenix and Tempe AZ. After receiving her MFA in painting from Arizona State University, she made the bold and life altering decision to move to Prague in The Czech Republic. It was there she discovered the works of Czech collagist Jiri Kolar, and Czech assemblage and conceptual artist Frantisek Skala, who admired her collage work, suggesting she continue in that medium. She took inspiration from Prague's Baroque buildings, notable for their sooty exteriors, and incorporated images of Mexican Milagros from her background in the American Southwest, entitling this series of works "Prague Milagros". Also while in Prague, she became a founding member of the semi-expatriate art group “Et Cetera”.

Girard’s work as a painter was a mix of invented archetypes, and imbued the realm of the subconscious. She painted with a rough expressionism, while remaining metaphorically literate. Her current incarnation in the digital medium still touches on aspects of the subconscious, with elements of mystery, dark whimsy, psychotic fancy, and a hefty dose of the absurd. She is heavily influenced by the genre of pulp art.

Her collage and montage aesthetics seek to draw us into a “meta-cognitive” passion play of opposing forces—visual versus abstraction, evidence versus interpretation—opening us to discovery. A man with a gun transposed over kitschy cartoon images of children at play. A dissected corpse layered over a television test pattern. 

Artists’ Statement:

“I would love to just say, ‘I make stuff on the computer’”—Debra Girard