Debbie Likley Pacheco: Living in Layers

Debbie Likley Pacheco was taught to paint by her father when she was a child. She studied design at the University of Memphis, while also taking the occasional photography and painting class. After graduating, she pursued a career in advertising as an art director, but about twenty years ago, she chose to leave the design field and devote herself to full-time painting. Pacheco currently works in mixed media, combining digital and analog methods to create layered images that straddle a line between naturalism and abstraction. The artist begins with original photographs of busy cityscapes. Using basic editing software such as Photoshop and Procreate, Pacheco adds digital layers to the photographs before having them professionally printed on fine art paper. Next, she adds paint to the printed images, affixes them to wooden panels, and coats the final works in multiple layers of wax for protection, texture, and more layers of visual depth.

Pacheco approaches the concept of layering both literally and symbolically. Photographs for the series on view in Living in Layers were taken in New York City and focus specifically on people walking in public places and on fragments of buildings, particularly street-facing facades that comprise so much of the visual landscape in the densest parts of the built environment. Pacheco’s final artworks vary in their levels of abstraction, mirroring the experiences of people emerging from buildings or the subway as they begin to walk through the city; at first, there is a blur of movement all around them, but eventually they center themselves in the new environment and their eyes focus on more specific things.