Deborah Thompson is a contemporary visual artist, educator and curator. She spent her childhood in Toronto, Ontario College of Art and Design (University) from which she graduated in 1984. After that, she followed her passion for teaching spending two decades working in Outdoor and Leadership Education which took her to remote pockets of North American and Africa. On route, she received a BA in Southwest Cultural Studies from Prescott College in Arizona. Returning to her art practice full time in 1996, where she completed and MFA in Visual Art from the University of Montana.

For the past two decades she has lived in Nelson, BC where her studio practice has been focused on painting and drawing with a focused interest in exploring sculptural mediums. Her work investigated today psychological narratives and their relationship to mythology and depth psychology. She has a love of Medieval art and mysticism.

Deborah has won several awards for both her studio and curatorial work including the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance, Osprey foundation and Canadian Museum Association. She has had many solo exhibitions in the public galleries around British Columbia. She has taught painting and drawing at the University of Montana, Kootenay School of the Arts at Selkirk College and the Oxygen Art Centre (of which she is a founding member). She has been a teacher in various capacities since 1980 and continues to love working with people.