Deborah Lawrence Schafer
Deborah Lawrence Schafer, 'White Flicker IX', 2026, Oil on panel, 91.44 x 121.92cm
This body of work explores memory, perception, and the sacred symbolism of butterflies—messengers of the soul and emblems of metamorphosis. Rooted in memories of the artist’s mother and her wonder at these creatures, the paintings trace how fragile wings and fleeting lives embody a deep interconnectedness. They remind the viewer that perception is always partial, a delicate dance of revealing and concealing reality.
Revisiting the past shows that recollection is never absolute; what seems fixed dissolves on closer inspection. These works are not reconstructions but inventions—dreamed fragments and composite moments that never existed as a whole. They evoke the mystery of why certain memories endure, haunting the psyche with untaught lessons.
Just as the Dada and Surrealist movements turned inward to find refuge from the devastation of World War, the artist of these works finds herself turning inward away from the global turmoil. In this way, the work ponders whether modern chaos drives the creator toward gentler subjects, or simply deeper into the subconscious. In the act of making, the artist finds respite. Unfixed Memories is a poetic attempt to hold what cannot be held—painting the ethereal spaces between remembering and imagining, capturing both what was and what is dreamed to have been.
Deborah Lawrence Schafer, a multidisciplinary artist, was born in 1970 in San Antonio, Texas, and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is deeply influenced by her Mexican heritage and her critique of the dominant industrial Western worldview that separates humans from the natural world, allowing for its exploitation and destruction.
Schafer's artistic explorations employ a range of materials, rituals, scientific data, and writings to reimagine our surroundings through painting, digital collage, photography, and video. More recently, her practice has turned inward to examine personal history and memory. By creating new interpretations of our landscape, these newer works provide symbolic restoration and invite viewers into a more profound relationship with the environment. Ultimately, her work provides an alternative perspective that acknowledges the profound interdependence and mutual influence between all living beings.
Schafer has exhibited her work in many shows nationally in Texas, Maine, Nevada, New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area, and her art is featured in numerous private collections. In 2020, she was a resident artist at R.A.R.O. in Madrid, Spain; in 2022, her works were showcased at the CICA Museum in South Korea; and this year she was named an Aesthetica Art Prize 2024 Longlisted Artist.