Deborah Wace

Deborah Wace, Churchill Fellow & Business Owner of Deborah WACE Pty Ltd

Deborah Wace is a plant advocate and professional Printmaker from Tasmania, Australia. Her artwork is a highly detailed and intimate window into the botany of Tasmanian Native Orchids, Rainforest and Buttongrass plant communities. She uses Drypoint and Monoprint techniques to depict the native orchids in large scale, drawn over many plates, root to flower. She also uses pressed plant specimens sourced from and illustrating the diverse flora of the Buttongrass plant communities and rainforest habitat. The digitisation of her personal Herbarium collection has made over 190 taxonomic groups of plants, lichen, fern, moss, orchid and seaweed from Tasmania, available as design elements for future works. Her arts practice and fabric designs are documented in film and stills in numerous ways, enabling engagement with Australian audiences and the international fabric industry with a view to finding licensing agreements and Industry partners for future fabric print production. She prints digitally onto silk and other fabric developing designs for clothing and limited edition art textile. Her work is also available for interior design function as well as original edition fine art. Deborah teaches from her Print, Press & Draw studio in Hobart, running small classes in printmaking techniques to the public. She is also a singer/songwriter, performing in a’cappela groups, choir, band and solo since 1988. Immersion in and deeper understanding of wild place through botany is her aim. Forming a link to the earliest European Botanical Historical collections is a strong thread through her artwork. Deborah’s recent Churchill Fellowship to study the early French botanical historical record from Tasmania, brings a new and richly layered range of designs for print onto fabric.