Deb L Bunker is an artist living and working in Mid Wales and is primarily a painter in oils or watercolours. Her subject matter spans landscape, still life, portraiture and performance activism.

Having grown up in rural mid Wales and having received what she considers ‘a proper country upbringing,’ she is passionate about the environment and sees huge changes in the habitats so close to her heart. One of her chief concerns is how very detached from nature our modern world seems to be and how unaware of its’ importance for our future survival. Her work has taken a different turn from merely painting pretty landscapes or illustrating natural history books to trying to convey a more emotional response via the means of paint, sculpture or performance activism.

Her daily practice starts with a walk and meditation in or around countryside around her home. This ritual not only prepares her mentally for the days’ painting but is also a means of gathering information, either for her painting studies or for the various citizen science projects in which she is involved. Her paintings are studies of memories, in landscape this might mean a study of important habitat that may be under threat or it might just be a celebration of light on a distant hillside, the image lending a sense of occurring in a specific moment that will soon pass. It welcomes the viewer to use their imagination and explore their senses, whether it’s a feeling of spray from crashing waves, the warm sun peering through rolling clouds, or time passing in the stretching of a leafs’ shadow.

The slower, more mindful process of oil painting reflects her wish to encourage the viewer to explore their connection with the subjects of each work and the sense of transience persists, increasingly as a response to the changes she has observed in the natural world.

Deb is very much about connection, engaging with people and passing on knowledge. From creative retreats in Mid Wales to catching the current downriver to Herefordshire and the borders to host watercolour workshops..

She has been been working with the environmental performance activism group, the Red Rebels, since 2019, most recently on the Save the Wye pilgrimage and with the Mid Wales Red Rebel Brigade in one bodymind performance actions and was recently involved in a film making project at Tintern Abbey with the Writers Rebellion. She regularly donates artwork to help promote the cause of environmental organisations and groups.