Deborah Hobson United Kingdom

• 
• 

  Back to profiles Invite to apply

I am a Black British woman visual artist, journalist, tv and radio documentary producer of Caribbean descent. I completed a masters in Fine Art at the University of the Arts London (UAL) Chelsea College of Arts in 2021 and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art: Drawing at UAL Camberwell College of Arts in 2020.

The focus of my practice is mainly portraiture where I use graphite pencil, charcoal, pastel, watercolour, acrylic and oil paints on paper and canvas. I also experiment with expanded notions of portraiture through digital and analogue photography, video and collage.

Currently, my portraits are based on original photographic images I take and some sourced stills. My subjects are prominent Black political campaigners whom I have worked with, friends and family and some well-known Black figures in popular culture and those who have been overlooked or ignored. There are instances where my drawings and paintings of people have been pegged to news stories that have captured my interest as a Black journalist.

Black oral and local community history and representations of it through paintings, drawings, collage and video has been an important feature of my work as a means of preserving an aspect of Black culture - the relationship between Black identity and place that might be subject to cultural erasure. The notion of psychogeography has provided a useful means by which to interrogate these issues. I am exploring how my art practice might serve as a counter or corrective narrative to the misrepresentation of historical Black political activism in Britain from the 1980s to present. Preservation of memories and the benefit of lucid dreams to the conscious self and creativity is also an area of interest.