New gallery features New Bedford artist
Deborah Macy poses with a couple of her paintings. Photos by Kat Sheridan
A painting of Princess Sunflower. 
The featured painting in the show. 
The Bar Tabs. 
A painting by Macy. 
A woman lounging on a chair.
Deborah Macy poses with a couple of her paintings. Photos by Kat Sheridan
A painting of Princess Sunflower.
The featured painting in the show.
The Bar Tabs.
A painting by Macy.
A woman lounging on a chair.
Deborah Macy has been painting her entire life, with a focus on women and diverse people of the Southcoast. Her art is now being shown in Dartmouth, at Gatlin Fine Framing, Fine Tea.
“I love to paint a rainbow of people, and that’s what we have here in the area,” Macy said, “I love the different skin tones. I love to put people on the wall in a frame and show them off.”
This is not the first gallery to be shown at the framing shop, but a guest at the opening show on Saturday, July 11 stated it was one of the most packed.
Her style started when her husband, an antique dealer, received a trunk filled with dresses. She loved this, and it inspired her to create historic art with modern people.
“I had silk dresses, antique dresses that had walked the streets of New Bedford back in the day,” Macy said, “I found models willing to wear them with clothespin and stitches in the back, and pins, to make them fit.”
She added, “I especially love costuming and outfits of different ethnicities, of different time periods,” she said.
She creates a scene, and then places her subjects in these scenes. She finds antique pieces and dresses her models in antique dresses and clothing.
She loves to focus on women, as she feels “I know the female psyche.”
Macy was born into a family of artists, and she describes herself as having free lessons through her family. Her father gave her a set of oil paints when she turned 15, and she fell “in love” with the medium.
“I had a brush in my hand very early,” she said.
Her family is well known in the art scene, with some of her relative’s paintings being in the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Macy teaches night classes at New Bedford Vocational High School. She has been teaching for 28 years, and many students attended the gallery opening.
The gallery doubles as a framing studio and rare tea shop. The owner, Hank Gatlin, also is in the band The Bar Tabs. The band played at the gallery opening.
“The fact that [Gatlin] has this gallery space here now is something that people need to know about,” she said.
