Three Layer Cake

It’s always shocking to hear artists express insecurity about their work – brilliant painters who are so terrified to show their work that they invest their talents in a completely different medium, such as glass work.  They choose to keep their paintings for themselves, scared of the criticism of their favourite form of expression.

I don’t know if Debra Franses Bean is terrified to show her paintings, but when she told me she sometimes had doubts about her work, of course I thought she was crazy.

Debra has a multidisciplinary background-- her first degree was in Economics, Politics, and Philosophy from Manchester University.  After a professional career in the media industry, she returned to Central Saint Martins to study Fine Art, Film Making and Sculpture.  In her third year, she won the Digetex Student of the Year sponsorship award – she deserved it.  By then, she had already shown internationally, and still does, in Germany, Australia, London, the U.S. and Italy.  All of the media in which she works (painting, textile, sculpture) have been publicly recognized.  She has been chosen by Paul Smith for his Fashion Week in Milan, Harvey Nichols, Glaxo Smith-Kline, the Design Room at Selfridge’s, and on 15 September 2005 John Oliver in Notting Hill became the first retailer to launch her Limited Edition textile and wallpaper designs, which is where I was first introduced to Debra’s work and at interior designers Caira Mandaglio…  Either all of us are crazy (we are certainly crazy about her work) or she is crazy to have doubts. 

Of course there is a fine line between arrogance and confidence, and all good people do doubt themselves, but could so many prominent designers/companies whose business is to put their money on the winner back a loser??

Debra is adept at rendering her vision of her surroundings through her work, much of which is Limited Edition.  Her snapshots of what we feel inside are conveyed in her trademark handbag sculptures, reflected in her photographic exhibits, and repeated in her fabric designs.  She’s just as talented in two dimensions as she is in three (bronze, stone, resin), and she’s every bit as eloquent and polished as her designs suggest.  She has travelled the world and keeps a piece of what she has seen and the people she has met, and very obviously incorporates that into her work.  She turns what others would consider devastation, like her house burning down, into opportunities to create.  And if all of this weren’t enough, she’s really a lovely lady.  

About her future, Debra says 2006 will see the launch of more retail concessions, at least three new edgy collections and a limited edition range of her existing collections in different colours and scales.