Bell recently divulged to Robyn Sassen (for an article that appeared in the Sunday Times): “The idea of an artist as a magician delights me. It is about alchemy and the turning of base material into gold.” Bell’s work is fundamentally informed by a personal search for the ‘Self’ and she often draws on spiritual imagery from a wide range of sources. Multi-layered references and connection to ancient sources and memories is linked to her spiritual beliefs and how she defines herself as an artist in Africa. This continuity of form and content within Bell’s opus allows the possible meanings within her work to reach beyond the personal search of the artist herself.

Companion to Deborah Bell’s Alchemy is a publication of the same name, which looks at the last ten years of Bell’s collaborative printmaking. It highlights the start of her printmaking career alongside William Kentridge and Robert Hodgins and expands on her recent visits to Jack Shirreff (107 Workshop), Phil Sanders (Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop) and regular projects at DKW and the new location at Art on Main with Jillian Ross, Mlungisi Kongisa and Niall Bingham.

Deborah Bell is also the subject of one of the TAXI-10, part of the TAXI Art Books series of monographs of South African artists published by David Krut Publishing. A re-print of TAXI-10 has recently become available again.