Biog

Deborah Porter (b.1969, UK) is a British artist working with the female body she is based in Winchester, UK. She received her degree at City & Guilds Art School in London in 1993, digital training at the London College of Printing and has recently completed her MA in Fine Arts at Winchester School of Art, Southampton University.

Her work has been exhibited locally and internationally, including shows at St Martin’s In The Fields (London), Harvey Nichols and shared exhibitions in London. She has had work in Open-call exhibitions at The Mall Galleries and an artist’s residency from CAS Arts Associates in 2019, her work has been sold locally, London and in France. She has recently won the Arcylic Painter Award for the CASS 2025 Art Prize..

Artist Statement

I am a contemporary feminist artist based in Winchester, UK, working from a phenomenological perspective. The female body is central to my practice — I explore how women’s bodies, in all their sizes and forms, occupy, claim, and experience the body in the world. Through painting, drawing, sculpture, and mixed media, I respond to the objectification and idealisation of the female form while exploring themes of vulnerability, ageing, identity, and difference. I work with paper, wax, and found materials, using my own body as a tool for drawing and mark-making. This physical engagement allows me to connect emotion, gesture, and embodiment in a direct, visceral way.

Influenced by German and American Abstract Expressionism, my practice has evolved to engage with Julia Kristeva’s The Abject and Freud’s The Uncanny — exploring what lies beneath the surface of the self. Artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Marlene Dumas, Maria Lassnig, Willem de Kooning, Kiki Smith, and Berlinde De Bruyckere have profoundly shaped my approach to expression, form, and the body.

My work seeks to bridge the divide between inner emotion and bodily presence, using the creative process as a form of inquiry. I often navigate the darker, introspective spaces of identity through meditative, process-based making and the use of sound or music as gateways to the subconscious.

I completed my MA in Fine Art at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton), where I expanded my practice into sculpture and assemblage. This body of work explored fragmentation, transformation, and narrative through moulded wax body parts, referencing Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ feminist fable Bluebeard to reinterpret stories of female strength, survival, and self-discovery.

“My work goes to uncomfortable places where bodies are estranged and disembodied.”