The Power of the Feminine: Deborah Stevenson’s Beautiful and Compelling Collage Artworks

There is no intention to create a specific image. Instead, American artist Deborah Stevenson surrounds her work table with dozens of images cut from magazines, newspapers, books and photographs. She shuffles these around like a clairvoyant divining meaning from tarot cards. It’s an adventure with her muse. When an image sticks, Stevenson juxtaposes others until one fits. Now the process of making a collage can begin.

Stevenson has described this process as using her eyes and hands to facilitate the arrival of a picture. It’s spontaneous and fun. The cutting and pasting of these images is the hard and tricky part.

Her collages should come with footnote as each image is filled with subtle allusions and multiple meanings. These are works intended to express “ideas that would be difficult to put into words, but come out very easily and clearly in imagery.” An “exploration of concepts of power, beauty, the Feminine, and mysterious archetypal conjunctions.”

Deborah Stevenson was born in Washington D.C., she spent part of her childhood in Tokyo before returning to high school in Baltimore. She graduated from the Sarah Lawrence College in New York with a BA in Fine Art. Originally a landscape painter, Stevenson developed a passion for collage about yen years ago. She found the process of making collages accessed a different part of her consciousness, as her work was no longer representational but intuitive.

Buy or see more Deborah Stevenson’s work here.