Painter, teacher and writer Deborah Beck was born in 1954 in Sydney, the eldest of five children. Encouraged to study art from an early age by her parents, she attended Hornsby Technical College Saturday art classes under the tutelage of Margaret Woodward.
After finishing her Higher School Certificate she enrolled at Meadowbank Technical College as a preliminary year for her full time study at the National Art School (NAS), East Sydney Technical College, which she attended from 1973-75. Fellow students at the NAS included Fiona Hall, Kerrie Lester, Stephen Mori, Geoff Harvey and Susan Norrie; Beck also met her long term partner, sculptor Jim Croke, at art school.
Beck studied with teachers such as John Firth-Smith and Syd Ball, and began exhibiting in group exhibitions while still a student. Despite many protests and marches, NAS students were moved off the East Sydney campus in Beck’s final year, and she received her Diploma in Art (majoring in painting) from Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education.
Beck and Croke moved to Goulburn for a year before travelling overseas in 1978. The couple worked in London and visited museums throughout Europe. It was this first major trip that began Beck’s interest in architecture which informed her later work.
On returning to Australia, Beck and Croke bought an old butter factory near Goulburn, which they set up as a studio. They helped found the Goulburn Regional Gallery and Beck began teaching painting and drawing at the technical college in Goulburn.
It was not until her move back to Sydney (along with Croke and their two children) that Beck held her first solo show in 1986 at Hogarth Galleries in Paddington, after which she began to exhibit regularly. Her travels to New York, France, Egypt and China gave her rich imagery for her paintings of architectural details and interiors. In 2000 a survey of her work relating to ornamental architecture, 'Fragments’, was held at UTS Gallery in Sydney, and in 2001 she completed a series of works based on the stone carvings at the University of Sydney, resulting in an exhibition in the University Art Gallery.
She was also a recipient of the NAS residency at La Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2005, and has been a finalist in the Sulman Prize (2002) and Blake Prize.
Beck taught in many art schools in Sydney until 2000, when she took a position as a lecturer in drawing at the NAS. Here she set up the NAS archive, helped curate exhibitions in the NAS Gallery, and wrote a book on the site, 'Hope in Hell: the history of Darlinghurst Gaol and the National Art School’ (Allen and Unwin, 2005). Her interest in history led her to complete her Master of Arts (history) at the University of Sydney in 2009, which resulted in a second book on the history of the Cell Block Theatre.
Beck’s work is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of NSW library and the University of Sydney. In 2009 she joined Wilson Street Gallery in Newtown, Sydney.
