Debra Lynn Manville 

Debra is a self-taught painter, beginning at 12 years old in acrylic, always painting bright colors, forms, shapes and text. She attended Rowan University and then she also received her certificate for interior design at NYU.  Her other art interests are photography, collage, landscaping design and writing. She has always been a big fan of graffiti, probably because the letters are so hard to read that they become forms and take on new meaning. 

Through the years, her artistic language has changed from literal to abstract and vague. She like to use colors and shapes and forms as a language. In 2016, she formed 1milliondiamonds as away not only to help herself catalog art with its own semiotic language that was inspiring, but also to promote artists that were making art that others have not seen.

She has come to form a new language in art for herself during her art career. In what she has coined as, "silent art," there is a juxtaposition of silence and tension through shapes, form, line and color. Each element forms its own language and in silent art, the forms speak a silent language. Just as in graphic design, a typeface will speak a personality, just as in interior design, a piece of furniture will emanate its purpose and elegance, the same holds true for the forms represented in her art. Lines, colors and forms glow with their own meaning, interacting with the viewer about their own internal dialogue. It is speaking its own language to each individual viewer.

Each artist speaks through their own art language. She has been researching this through curating 1milliondiamonds over the past four years. Just as how stripe artists like stripe art and hard edge artists are drawn to hard edge work: our brains think in patterns and form. Her work has been growing its own dialect since she started over thirty years ago.

Currently, she is working on the 21 collaborations with artists all over the world, doing video discussions with artists via the 1milliondiamonds YouTube page, transforming Diamonds into an online gallery and also making new pieces. 




 


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