We are always looking for artists to contribute to our gallery. If you would like to submit art, poetry, or other visual media to be featured on our website, please email us at iqrr@vtc.vt.edu.
Featured Artist
Debra Keirce
Debra Keirce has a story that is her reason for creating each original oil painting in her Northern Virginia studios. She insists that her stories are just the jumping off point though. Her hope is that every collector experiences her fine art in a way that allows them to finish or rewrite the stories she starts.
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Debra is an internationally acclaimed and collected master artist. She paints in a classical realism style. Her art ranges from miniature palm sized pieces created under lighted magnifiers, up to four foot tall mantle sized works. Debra's art is in permanent collections of museums in Montana and Tennessee, and corporate collections in Amazon Web Services. She is also represented by four reputable galleries, and three juried societies. She is an active signature member of several art societies.
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Debra's art relates to addiction because as far back as can be traced, five generations at least, both her maternal and paternal relatives have been impacted by severe alcoholism. The disease has shortened lives, broken families apart, and wreaked devastation on the people she holds most dear.
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Much of her art has a story thread about how there is great beauty and joy, even in dark places. Her pub scenes show the reflections and abstract color shapes that decorate walls and countertops that hear the achievements AND the losses of alcoholics daily. Her cocktail glasses hold candy bars or flowers because even though alcoholism is a tough hand to be dealt, people so often rise above the disease and put much beauty and good into the world.
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There is a stigma associated with addiction, and it hampers communication. Debra believes that recovery is hard enough, without the fact that our culture in North America has a deep misunderstanding of it. She has seen firsthand that you don't need childhood trauma to be an alcoholic. You don't choose to be an alcoholic. You can't just say no to drugs and alcohol if you are an alcoholic. There but for the grace of God, you are NOT an alcoholic if you don't understand this in every cell in your being.
Through her art, Keirce conveys experiences. She wants for people to enjoy the beauty with all of their senses. She wants for collectors to feel the emotions, but walk away smiling and hopeful.
To learn more, visit her website at www.DebKArt.com
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BOOKS
Through stories, science, and interviews, this book explores the choices we make around addiction and trauma. Charting a course through tragic consequences to a balanced, healthy, holistic lifestyle is never easy, but following the plans outlined by Todd Crandell, founder of Racing for Recovery, makes it simple and joyful.
MOVIES
Based on the best-selling pair of memoirs from father and son David and Nic Sheff, Beautiful Boy chronicles the heartbreaking and inspiring experience of survival, relapse, and recovery in a family coping with addiction over many years.
MUSIC
This playlist includes some of our favorite addiction recovery music across various genres
PODCASTS
"Join Dr. Nzinga Harrison, a physician board-certified in psychiatry and addiction medicine, who believes in a comprehensive, compassionate approach to treating addiction. Whether it’s heroin, pain pills, alcohol, meth, food, sex, or anything under the sun--it’s time to shift our thinking away from 28 days and onto recovery for life. From the creators of Last Day, this is your weekly go-to for any and all questions about addiction, treatment, mental health, recovery, and everything in between."