Deb Covell

Deb Covell’s practice is concerned with bringing a form into being by exploring the material and sculptural potential of paint. She has omitted a traditional fixed support of a canvas or wooden panel as she found them too restricting and influenced the direction of the work too much at an early stage. Instead she keeps the making process as playful, exciting and versatile as possible by using a method which is open to many changes and possibilities.

All her work starts with her painting layers of acrylic paint onto stretched plastic sheets which are then peeled off to create a support . She then goes onto fold, crease, cut and collapse these paint supports thinking about gravity, weight, shape, surface and colour and lets the natural behavior of the paint take precedent until new three dimensional forms emerge.


Deb Covell (b.1966, Stockton on Tees) lives and works in Teesside and is represented by Gray Contemporary, USA. She received her BA Fine Art from Liverpool Polytechnic and her MA Fine Art from UEL. She was a finalist in the 2014 Aesthetica Art Prize and her works are held in private and public collections including the MIMA Collection, Middlesbrough. 

Selected exhibitions include, Altered States, Kirkleatham Museum 2020, Legacy, The Auxiliary, Middlesbrough, 2019, Ing Discering Eye Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London 2018, Shaping, Kathryn Markel Gallery, New York, 2018, After an Act, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, 2018, Eccentric Geometric, Arthouse 1, London, 2017, Bauhaus Babies, Odetta Gallery, New York, 2017, 0/1 KNO, National Art Museum, Ukraine, 2017, Real Lines, Gray Contemporary, USA, 2016, The Fold, Blyth Gallery, London, 2016, Fall of the Rebel Angels, 55th Venice Biennale, 2015, Real Painting, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, 2015, From Nowt to Summat, MIMA, Middlesbrough

artist’s website