Hello, I'm Debbie Ranniger.

My art practice began as a way to speak when language was not enough. When I was seven, my two-year-old brother died suddenly. I found him in distress early one morning and ran for help; although the ambulance came quickly, I never saw him again. That loss became a defining moment in my life and, in time, the beginning of my relationship with art. When school resumed in January, my second-grade teacher recognized my grief and encouraged me to draw what I was feeling and remembering. I discovered a way to hold what felt fleeting: sorrow, memory, confusion, love, and the presence of someone who was gone. Art gave me a way to make visible what was difficult to say. I work from close observation and emotional attention. In pencil, oil pastel, watercolor to capture brief human and natural experiences that carry deep meaning but disappear all too quickly.