Inspired by her mom’s art, Debi began drawing and painting when she was in kindergarten. She became completely immersed in art, and before long had a collection of work. “I had so many drawings and paintings that I decided to have an art show in our back yard,” she remembers. “My dad worked with me to make a sign for our mailbox announcing the show, and I hung up all of my art on our back yard fence.” But before the show saw its first visitor, a sudden downpour from a rainstorm ruined all of her work. “Dad came to the rescue though, and bought the whole collection for 2 dollars. And that, was the beginning, of my artistic career.”Debi continued to develop her skills, becoming adept in a variety of different media such as pencil, oil, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, clay, wool sculpting, airbrushing, digital art and wood working and steadily becoming more proficient. After earning a BFA, emphasis in illustration from University of Kansas, she ventured into the world of commercial art. Now, after more than 20 years as a designer, she has worked for many different organizations such as universities, retail/manufacturing companies, law firms as well as a financial firm. “Sometimes I think I’d like to focus on just one media, but I just wouldn’t be happy,” she says. “It’s just how my mind works. It seems like I’m always thinking about art, about new ways to do things. I’ll have dreams about creating art and I’ll wake up at 3 a.m. with a new ideas that I just have to try. My mind just never stops. I call it BOF or Brain on Fire.”Regardless of the media, there are common threads that run through nearly all of her work. Debi is obsessive about extremely fine detail and loves incorporating into her work. “I like for people to be able to really look at my art, to spend time with it and be rewarded by finding some new, tiny detail that maybe no one else had noticed,” she says. “That drives me.” She also loves to create places and creatures no one has ever seen before. “I like thought of people escaping reality for a moment, being still and getting lost in my artwork.”That inspiration seems to be a constant for Debi, whose greatest attribute may well be that she sees the world as her canvas, a place full of art and the potential for new, more intriguing works of art. “Art is everywhere … it’s all around us and I believe the inspiration I find in the world and the talent to create art comes from God,” she says. “Of course, it’s up to me to see what’s out there, dare to live outside the box, work extremely hard developing my talent and have the ability share it with others.”While Debi’s path has taken many twists and turns throughout her artistic life, she still looks back to where that path began, at a backyard art show in New Jersey, where a dad and his little girl turned a rain-out into a life.