Biography: Debra Sloan Gerard

Debra is an award-winning artist who lives and works in her home studio in Kimberly, WI and has been painting and drawing since 1985. She graduated with a B.A. from UW-Green Bay with concentrations in Education and Graphic Design. Her work has been shown in galleries in Door County Wisconsin, and she has exhibited in several Wisconsin art museums. Following college, she taught art in the Wisconsin Public Education System, grades K-8 and with summer high school art camps at UW-Green Bay in Graphic Design.

In the early 1990’s, Debra’s life circumstances created the need to leave public education, and she took her teaching talents into the business world into the field of training and organizational development, simultaneously earning her M.S. degree (Silver Lake College) in Organizational Behavior. After consulting for several years, she decided to redirect her career and go back to her first love – art, and started her art business (2000).

Debra married in 1996, and she and her husband Roger had a son in 2000. Immediately after the birth of her son (2000), she illustrated a 32-page children’s picture book, One Starry Night. Her first Honorable Mention award came in 2000, at the SECURA Insurance Fine Art Show in Appleton, WI. In 2003 she won a second Honorable Mention for her collection of work at ART in the Park, Appleton, WI (Appleton Art Center). In 2005, Debra won Best of Show with her collection of surrealism work in Sturgeon Bay, WI (Miller Art Museum). Her last Honorable Mention was awarded in 2008, at a juried group exhibition, Art at the Arb (Memorial Park and Gardens). Her future work is focused on her personal transformation life milestones. Her series will be called. “Transition:  Metamorphosis Through Growth”.