Artist Profile: Debbie Veith

By Ellen Samsell Salas

Mixed media artist Debbie Veith likes to take old things and make them new. Photos, quotations, dress patterns, war bonds, fabric, bottles, and frames — almost anything can become part of a creation that touches viewers.

Veith’s personal favorite is a celebration of her mother. Combining a piece of her mother’s bridal veil with a photo of her mother as a child, and words that capture the pain of loss: “It has been two years since she passed away, and I find myself wishing I could look through the lace-curtained window of the afterlife for a glimpse of my dear departed mother.”
The work hangs in Veith’s studio.

Like most of her pieces, the tribute to her mom evolved from a concept.

“I’ll sit with my sketchbook, do some journaling, then I might have a loose concept,” Veith said.

From her concept, Veith envisions a color palette, as she experiments in her sketchbook. Typically, she limits each work to three colors plus black and white to create the contrasts that are key to her works. Though she limits her palette, she does not limit her materials.

“I love nostalgic things,” she said. “We can learn a lot from the past.”

So, while many relegate family photos to boxes stowed in the basement, Veith reimagines them and allows them to speak to viewers. Notes her grandmother wrote, deeds, musical scores from her grandfather’s days as an orchestra leader, feathers, stones, sand, and branches become the heart of her canvasses.

Veith often incorporates text into her collages, striking personal chords for some while sparking thought for others.

“All my stuff has to have some meaning to it,” said Veith.

Adding to this depth are the textures she achieves through her paint, using anything from a potato masher to the fabric-marking tool from her sixth grade sewing class to several of the dozens of brushes she has “groomed” over the years to create patterns and movement.

Never having formally studied art, Veith has always created. So, when she retired, she moved to the heart of Woodstock where she spends hours at the Reeves House surrounded by other artists. But, she added, “I don’t do ‘art.’ I can’t draw well. But I’m good with color and balance and abstract, which I love.”

Veith is also exceptionally good at experimentation, mixing her own colors, fashioning palettes from wooden trays and incense-burners from bottles, making her own collage paper, and letting her works evolve.

“Sometimes, a piece goes in a completely different direction than my original concept,” Veith said. “Sometimes, stuff just appears, and it’s beautiful to me. Other times, it’s rough and not that good. When that happens, I just paint over it and start again. I like to play and see what happens.”

A people person who served as a nurse for 45 years and continues to volunteer with an Atlanta transplant team, Veith sees her art as another way of touching people.

“This has been my life. Other things — my career as a nurse, raising three daughters — are out of the way. Now I have the time. I don’t care if people buy my stuff. But I do feel great when they do,” Veith said. “I hope the work resonates with a person in some way, either the color, the style, the words, the sentiment, and that they take it home and enjoy it. That’s pretty cool.”