Baton Rouge native and National award winning artist, Debbie Cannatella, began her career as a full-time gallery artist when she relocated to Chicago after over 20 years of painting part-time. Since then, she has enjoyed traveling throughout the Nation, painting and teaching classes and workshops in transparent watercolor and mixed water media.  She helped the city of Tyler, TX design and open the city's first fine arts gallery, Gallery Main Street. She also helped organize the Downtown Tyler Arts Coalition before moving to Corpus Christi with her husband in 2010, where she was part-owner of Studio C Gallery. A 2015 move landed her family in the vibrant city of Dallas where they owned a 1907 Prairie Style home in the Historical District of Munger Place. But as luck would have it, the move there was short lived and an opportunity presented itself for she and her husband to move to northern Kentucky.  Having lived in Maryland as a child and middle-schooler, she longed for the four seasons that NKY has to share.  After building a house, she now has a full basement that she has converted into a studio large enough to house her workshops.   She has enjoyed resurrecting her metalsmithing to expand her design into jewelry creation. Besides her art career, she loves playing her Middle-Eastern and African drum collection, digging in her gardens, practicing Taoist Tai Chi along side her husband, cooking (she's a foodie), experiencing ethnic restaurants, writing, weaving, and all things nature.

 

She has been published in Artistic Touch 4, the Artist Magazine, and in the 2015 edition of the Best of Watercolor, Splash 16: Exploring Texture! and Art Journey Animals: A Collection of Inspiring Contemporary Masterworks, both by Northlight Books. Previously, her work was selected for the 2010 Pennington National Balloon Championship poster, and was the featured October 2010 artist in Brush, Paper, Water by artist Chris Beck. She is a signature member of the Louisiana Watercolor Society, Artists of Texas, and a member of American Watercolor Society, National Watercolor Society, the Kentucky representative for the Southern Watercolor Society, and a former president of the Watercolor Society of South Texas.  She is known for the building of transparent layers and the crisp detail of her work, as well as the strong use of light and design. She has enjoyed solo and invitational exhibits. In 2018 she was included in the Third Annual Contemporary Exhibition at Palazzo Franchi in Assisi, Italy in collaboration with PRO VOBIS Art Residence. Locally she is actively involved in supporting Gateway Community and Technical College, where her husband is acting President. currently lives with her husband and two rescue animals: a toy daschund, a toy daschund/terrier/chihuahua mix, Pippin and Arwen.