Debi Pendell explores abstract elements of recognizable shapes and symbols, combining materials and processes to examine how visual art and language are interpreted and understood. Her work investigates semiotics, language, and the creation of meaning through the format of landscape painting.

Letters, numbers, mathematical equations, and other forms of notation are used abstractly as elements of value, texture, pattern, and spatial structure rather than as literal information. Trees, birds, circles, and other imagery function similarly as symbolic forms. Through these visual languages, Pendell explores how people “read” images, construct meaning, and connect personal experiences with shared systems of communication.

For me, the act of painting and the paintings themselves exist as one and the same. They engage our imaginations and emotions. They are sensuous. Though we may dress them in words, they need no explanation.   

My picture-making utilizes oil paint, mineral spirits, linseed oil, pencils, inks and collage. It’s made on canvas, paper, mat board, and wood panels and uses brushes, palette knives, rags and sandpaper. 

The developing image provides impulses which influence its composing.
There is no plan. We may be enlivened and nourished by a completed painting.
I am grateful for all of this.

Doug Trump              Marlboro  VT     May 2026