Debbie Mackinnon

Debbie Mackinnon trained as a medical and scientific illustrator in London before moving sideways into a successful career as an art director in publishing, where she wrote and designed many award-winning children’s books. After moving to Australia, she has painted full time for over twelve years. Debbie is the founder and director of me Artspace in St Leonards, Sydney. Her dedication as a contemporary coastal painter begins each morning with a ritual trek along cliffs, crags and rock platforms of the Sydney coastline. “Large seascapes start with quick studies and drawings made en plein air. Then the oil paintings develop in my Sydney art studio. My coastal oil paintings explore that mysterious, elusive, tidal boundary between land and sea. The ocean is always in motion, the land changing with its rhythms. Recent artworks have a fragmented, shifting perspective. This challenges me and the viewer to look a little differently at both land and sea. Hovering at times on the edge of abstraction, I aim to simply observe and celebrate the beauty and joy contained in the boundaries of the ocean, that last great wilderness.”