Debra Zechowski (b. 1983, Queens, NY) is a contemporary painter with a focus on large scale figurative works depicting her working-class Slovakian-Polish-American family. She investigates memory and nostalgia through rendering found photographs of her family’s domestic life. Painting these images allows the artist to reconnect with moments from the past, while the often immense scale invites a public voyeurism into her very private, personal world.
Growing up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, gentrification significantly impacted Debra Zechowski’s family and their environment. In response to a growing sense of cultural erasure, Zechowski’s nostalgic paintings recreate intimate images of her family’s working-class identity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, at larger-than-life scale.
Zechowski studied art at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts and graduated from City University of New York, having completed M.F.A. study at Queens College in 2011. Since then, the artist has continued her studio practice through residencies with the non-profit organizations Groundswell Community Mural Project and 4heads.
Following Debra Zechowski’s 2017 solo showing at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, she was highlighted as an emerging artist to watch. Her work has been featured in Brooklyn Magazine, Art F City and The Art Newspaper. She is a recent recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts City Artist Corps Grant, and her work is held in private collections.
