Drawing happens in solitude. While many art forms are collaborative in nature, drawing is quiet and still. I love this aspect of my chosen medium but I also have a desire to share the act of creating and a need to look slightly outward, not just inward. As the majority of my work is portraiture, I invite my subjects to become collaborators in the process of building a portrait. They choose how to present themselves - what garments, objects, and private thoughts best represent who they are at that moment in time. They decide what face to wear in the images I put on paper.

My current drawings, while straying from a history of portraiture, still utilize the same process. My cat has a habit of periodically leaving gifts for me in the same spot, beautifully composed and exactly where they might catch the most perfect ray of sunlight. This series, "Simple Gifts," is a collaboration between me and her, although she's blithely unaware that she has made an entire body of work, left on the concrete for me to discover.

Deanna Watson is a contemporary artist from Kernersville, NC whose work is primarily photorealistic, rendered in graphite. She finds inspiration in the people, places, and spaces that are most familiar.

Watson exhibits occasionally, but is most often found behind the scenes volunteering at The Weatherspoon Museum of Art and SECCA, and installing art at GTCC where she has been a faculty member since 2012.