About Time…
Aside from time spent studying fine art at Sheffield University, Deb Bell has lived her life in the North Pennines. The wide-open fells and rugged, unforgiving moorland of her home provide Deb with inspiration for the landscapes that become her clocks.
“What I put into the paintings is what I feel when I’m immersed in nature and the elements. There’s a windswept, wild quality to my work.”
Deb’s work as a dowser (one who finds underground water through the medium of a hazel rod) and a painter mean she is continually drawn back into the elements that feed her creativity: earth, wind and water. In 2009, searching for a clock to hang in her Eighteenth Century farmhouse Deb could find nothing suitable until she took one of her own canvases and changed its function. ‘About Time’ was born in Spring 2010 when people began commissioning their own personalised designs – from abstract works of colour to designs for children.
Deb enjoys the paradox at the centre of ‘About Time’: that timeless landscapes are made into devices by which we mark time.
“We come and go, rushing and clock watching but this land doesn’t alter. It doesn’t care if we’re running late. My clocks are a reminder to keep an eye on the bigger picture.”
