LOCAL LIGHT
#151: A Conversation with Champlain Valley Artist Deb Kahler.
Whitcomb’s Arts is a gallery and community space operating under the auspices of Whallonsburg Grange. The quality and frequency of gallery exhibitions has increased in recent years under the direction of curators Vicki Copeland and Michelle Parker. The space provides a year-round venue for emerging and recognized regional artists such as Zach Clemans, Russ Hartung, Dan Keegan, Kevin Raines, Cynthia Schira, Steven van Nort, and others, such as Deb Kahler. I spoke with Kahler about “Local Light”, her current show at Whitcomb’s. We began with her backstory.
Deb Kahler was born in the Hudson Valley and moved to Westport when she was in 8th grade. She completed an undergraduate degree in art drawing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where Kahler studied with Al Blaustein, Sal Montano, and Claire Romano. She taught several grant-funded workshops before deciding to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree in printmaking at Arizona State, which she completed at SUNY New Paltz. Kahler then moved to Portland Maine, where she shared a studio with fellow printmaker Ron Slater, exhibited at the Portland Public Library, and was published in Café Review, described on its website as”a Maine-based quarterly of poetry, art, and reviews.” Kahler eventually moved back to the Adirondack Coast of Lake Champlain where she established a home and studio in Wadhams. Kahler took a few printmaking classes with Diane Fine at SUNY Plattsburgh, where she later taught as an adjunct professor. I asked why someone with such a strong printmaking background is painting Adirondack landscapes.
“I do enjoy these scenes,” she replied. . . “the waterscapes, sunrises. . . the rich color. I have worked en plein air, but these paintings are from photographs, most of which I have taken. The photo is just a starting point for the image. . . my paintings are allowed to evolve into whatever speaks to me with color, light, and design.”
I ask how she hopes her work will engage viewers.
“My aim is to offer viewers paintings that are visually dynamic. . . I believe painting is a form of communication from the artist to the viewer,” says Kahler, “. . . a visual language, and the artist is in charge of what the viewer is seeing. It’s part of the process of what the artist experiences in the moment of creating the work and the act of self-expression. The viewer is able to experience that as they look at the work. My hope is to pass on to viewers the sense of peace and serenity that I feel when I am creating each piece.”
One of the reasons the Adirondack region became a destination was its reputation as a place one could recover from tuberculosis and regain one’s health in many ways. Reverend W.H.H. Murray declared nature a source of wellness. He claimed a month in the fragrant pine woods and balsam would transform sallow weaklings into a bronzed Olympians. I asked Kahler if she thought landscape paintings might function as remote-sensing stress-relief devices and thus sources of wellness.
“Absolutely, she replied. “. . .the sense of serenity, tranquility, and calm. That is something I experience from being out in nature, taking the photographs, and then reworking them into paintings. But aside from that, it’s also about the color and the visual excitement that you can create with dramatic, vibrant color.”
We look at her painting of a view from the summit of Hurricane Mountain. From a distance the painting reads like a photograph. When viewed up close the image dissolves into a gestural network of multicolored marks. This occurs in most of the paintings on view—photorealistic at first glance, but on closer inspection one discovers patterns of rhythmic brushwork.
Two themes keep reoccurring in my work,” says Kahler, “. . . geometric abstractions with patterns and designs. . . and then also the (representational) landscapes and waterscapes. I would like the two to merge. . . that’s the direction that I’m going with my work at the moment.”
I inquire about the genesis of a Lake Champlain painting with a distant Camel Hump Mountain below a geometric sunburst—a kind hybrid landscape reminiscent of Mexican painter Gerald Murillo, a.k.a. Dr. Atl, (1875-1964) and some Adirondack vistas by Rockwell Kent (1882-1971).
“When I first showed the painting, it didn’t have the light rays,” Kahler explains. “I reworked the water. . . I let the painting speak to me and decided maybe it needs something. . . and it just kind of came to me. I just saw these rays of light and I thought it would be fun to get into the abstract elements, and the geometry, so I drew in those lines, worked with the color, and was really excited when I completed it.”
I asked Deb Kahler what she hopes the exhibition’s visitor experience will be.
I hope people coming to see the show will see the peace, the beauty, serenity, and richness of color, light, and form, and whatever else. . . “, she replied, “. . . mostly it would be to be inspired by the beauty of nature. We’ve got a lot of that here.”
“Local Light: Scenes from The Adirondacks, Lake George, and Lake Champlain” an exhibition of paintings by Deb Kahler curated by Vicki Copeland will be on view through May 30 at Whitcomb’s Arts Gallery, 1598 NY Route 22, Whallonsburg, New York. 12936.
—James Lancel McElhinney © May 25, 2026
