About the Artist

Vermont artist, Deborah Sharpe-Lunstead, trained as a classical musician (Early music and Viola da Gamba) and later became a professional fiber artist (weaver, feltmaker, and papermaker). She was self-taught as a papermaker. Married to a diplomat, her family lived around the world, allowing her to experiment with making plant papers with tropical plants in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, Indonesia, and Washington, DC.

In 2002, she studied advanced papermaking techniques with Lynn Sures at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC. It was during this time that she learned how to create large sheets of paper and the basics of pulp painting. While at the Corcoran, one of her 3D paper sculptures was selected to tour the US as part of the 2nd Annual Collegiate Handmade Paper Art Show.

Although she had been a fiber artist for many years, until 2004 Deborah had never had a formal art class. While living in Sri Lanka from 2004-2006, she began to study drawing as a student of Sri Lankan artist, Anoma Wijewardene. Upon returning to Washington, DC in 2007, she continued art classes at The Art League in Alexandria, VA.

Combining a new understanding of painting with her years of experience as a paper maker, she has found her artistic voice using paper pulp as the medium for her painted images. When she moved to Vermont in 2008, she built a papermaking studio to focus on creating interesting handmade paper and exploring the many creative possibilities of pulp painting. Her first solo art show of pulp paintings, “A Year in Vermont”, was in November 2009 at The Art House in Middlebury, Vermont.

Sharing her love of handmade paper has always been an important part of her life. She has taught papermaking workshops for children, teachers, and artists in Washington, DC, Dhaka, Bangladesh, Kuala Lumpur and Kuching, Malaysia, and Colombo, Sri Lanka. She has also taught pulp painting workshops in Middlebury, VT and Cleveland, OH.

Her work has been exhibited at three Vermont galleries: Edgewater Gallery in Middlebury, Art on Main in Bristol, and the Brandon Artists Guild in Brandon, Vermont.

Deborah now lives in Middlebury, Vermont, where she is actively exploring the world of pigment and paper and fiber, creating exciting paintings of her new home, and the larger world where she has lived over the past thirty years. She is presently showing her artwork at Art on Main in Bristol, VT and at the gallery in her studio on Washington Street in Middlebury, VT.