Deborah Tilby, Golden Glow, oil, 12 x 16.
Deborah Tilby is attracted to light like the proverbial moth to a flame. Regardless of her landscape subject, the permeation of light plays a major role in her work. For her winning GOLDEN GLOW, the artist—who lives on Canada’s Vancouver Island—rose at 4 a.m. late last summer to seek the sunrise composition. “I timed my walk along a favorite beach to ensure I’d be in just the right place to get good photos of the sun coming up through the leaves and branches between the bushes,” she says. “I absolutely loved the way the light was coming through the tall grasses, too, with that beautiful, yellowy color. I’m drawn to the soft, subtle colors of nature.”
Tilby doesn’t follow a formula when she paints; instead, she feels her way through each work. “I normally paint more alla prima, but for this one, I actually did some layering,” she says. She put down yellows in a fine wash over the top half of the painting and added additional layers later, including slightly violet washes over everything. As for the foreground grasses, “a lot of that is palette knife work,” the artist says. “I use a knife in almost every painting, but never in a way that makes it feel like a ‘palette knife painting.’ People tell me they can always recognize one of my paintings, regardless of subject, and I think it’s because of the brushwork and the way I apply the paint,” she adds.
A fixture in the Western Canadian art world for years, Tilby recently has earned well-deserved recognition in the United States. Within the past year, the senior signature member of the Federation of Canadian Artists earned master status in Oil Painters of America and multiple awards for two waterscapes.
Find Tilby’s work at Gallery 8, Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada; Peninsula Gallery, Sidney, BC, Canada; and www.deborahtilby.com. —Beth Williams
This story appeared in the December 2021/January 2022 issue of Southwest Art magazine.