Biography
Debbie Budenberg’s sculptural works give form and expression to personal explorations of family. The tensions, conflicts, emotions and relationships that are central to her experience as a mother, daughter, parent and wife also underpin and inform her work as an artist. Deliberately ambiguous, she questions and seeks to understand the nature and source of the traditions and ideologies which shape our experiences, idealised notions and beliefs. Her life as a mother, daughter, wife, sister, and artist are intricately woven together.
In 2010 Debbie embarked on a theological programme of study to further her knowledge and understanding of origins, and the implications they have on shaping people, society and culture. Her continued quest to understand the nature of family, and her membership of it as an individual, extending beyond the domestic family, questions theological concepts of family and the self to consider the subjective nature of our realities. My work reflects my inherent need to question and further understand our formative experiences and those traditional ideologies which confer prioritising the needs of others and a ‘collective’ sense of family over and above conflicting desires for individualisation, self empowerment, and self fulfilment as reflective of contemporary society.
Themes of dependence, independence, and interdependence; freedom and restraint; the cyclical nature of family; perceptions of time, space and place are all recurring motifs in her work.