Email: debbiebudenberg@aol.com

Biography

Debra Budenberg's sculptural works give form to personal explorations of family life. The tensions, conflicts, emotions and relationships that are central to her experience as a mother, daughter, parent and wife also underpin and inform her work as an artist. Her life as a mother and artist are intricately woven together.

By selecting old items of furniture as an underlying structure the dramas of family life can emerge and unfold.

"The furniture provides a space for the positioning of myself in relation to the family, allowing me to explore the contradictory feelings of how the past might entrap us. Feelings of dependence, independence, and interdependence are considered and questioned."

Deliberately ambiguous, she questions her experiences and expectations, professing one idea whilst referencing another. Each sculpture is a passage towards greater understanding and resolution. They reflect an inherent need to uphold tradition, satisfy the needs of others and create family unity, juxtaposed with the desire for separation, individuality and liberation. Aspects of confinement and freedom are a recurrent theme.

Each sculpture represents moments in time, the process imposing layers of experience and a celebration and acknowledgement of the past, the strength of the family and its ever changing dynamic.