Chatting with local artist, author, teacher and more: Deborah Koff-Chapin

How to even introduce much-loved local artist Deborah Koff-Chapin, founder of Touch Drawing and the Soul Cards. 

Deborah is director of The Center for Touch Drawing and has taught Touch Drawing at conferences and graduate programs internationally. She is author of Drawing Out Your Soul and the Touch Drawing Facilitator Workbook and creator of the SoulCards 1&2, and Soul Touch Coloring Journals. I discovered Deborah and her work over 20 years ago when I lived in Hong Kong. Her SoulCards 1 were in the bookshop I frequented in Central. Imagine the pleasure on learning she lives on Whidbey when my family and I moved here!

Deborah is teaching a week-long Touch Drawing workshop here in the Heartland next week. And her beautiful, intuitive art is currently lining the walls of Thomas Berry Hall for program participants to see in an informal exhibit style. 

What perfect timing, then, to have a few moments for a sit-down. And ‘a few moments’ it is as I arrive to Deborah and her husband Ross’s home while food is cooking and dinner guests will soon be arriving. This is a very busy, happening couple. Ross, of course, is a well-known architect, having drawn up plans for several Langley buildings as well as at the Whidbey Institute - Ross designed Thomas Berry Hall, the much-loved Sanctuary as well as the interior of the Farmhouse. He was also the architect of the Whidbey Island Waldorf School. All stunning buildings and landmarks in south Whidbey.

Deborah tells me she has been developing Touch Drawing since a moment of play that 'dropped in' in 1974, on her last day of her last year at art school in New York City.  "Very cosmic timing kind of moment," she says now.  "It was a very revelatory type, energetic opening for me when I did it the first time. Just a playful cleaning up at a print shop. And instead of wiping with a paper towel, I moved my hands in the back of the paper towel and picked it up and saw, you know, from the ink, the marks that showed on the other side. And a whole opening happened in my psyche. It wasn't just the technique. I'm sure people have done a mark through a piece of paper in print shops, but I got a whole download about it and what it is and the power of it. And I did multiples. I don't know how many, I haven't counted. I still have the paper towels.”

Deborah describes the moment further as a kind of transformational process, a knowing. And one that could and would counterbalance the heavy press of technology. 

“It's extremely simple, extremely accessible for people who are afraid to do art. But the freedom of the multiple pages allows people to kind of bypass their fear and sort of drop more deeply into their souls. So it's a really transformational soul process. That’s what art really should be. I teach the process and I keep doing it through the ups and downs of being into it, in life.”

Today, Deborah teaches her Touch Drawing online in weekly groups as well as once in a year in-person here with us at the Whidbey Institute.  Next week, Deborah’s workshop will mark the 26th annual summer Touch Drawing gathering, meeting continuously since 1997, barring three years over COVID.

Deborah’s remembers clearly the first workshop at Whidbey Institute she held in 1997. 
“And so here's the moment for me. Thomas Berry Hall was under construction. It had the beautiful ceiling, but it was a cement floor and none of the glass walls and doors were in. It was just open and there was no kitchen. And that wing was not even started yet. But that was the first Touch Drawing gathering. We held it there and there was a moment the night before the gathering and the two of us, Ross and I, were standing there and looking at the hall under construction. This major manifestation for Ross in his early career and people actually coming and traveling to do Touch Drawing. It was like a moment of convergence. That was a really important moment for us.”

Deborah brought in her own chef, participants ate outside and washed their own dishes. Then, over the years as construction continued, there was a Sanctuary, and then a labyrinth. She began to incorporate the whole of the Heartland into the weeklong workshop.

“The event that I do would not be what it is if I wasn't at the Whidbey Institute. If I were to just rent some facility, it just wouldn't be what it is. It would not be the gathering and the people come and return and they feel immediately that timelessness of being here. So there's a continuum that's set up over time and years and energy that builds in a place. But it's also the blessing of these very particular space. I mean, to be able to draw in Thomas Berry Hall in such an expansive space and also have our circle where we meet in the center of it and draw, have drawing tables around the periphery of the room, to be able to spend deep time in a sanctuary, to be able to go out and do a meditation walk in the labyrinth and we set up drawing boards in the middle and draw in the labyrinth. You know, there's no such thing anywhere else.”

Deborah has many participants who return again and again to her workshop here, and they come from around the world - including all over the US, Europe and Australia.

Deborah’s beautiful, intuitive Touch Drawing art is currently lining the happy walls of Thomas Berry Hall. This is the first time, she tells me, that her artwork has been hung! 

Deborah has served as Interpretive Artist at numerous conferences. That means she sits with her drawing board during presentations and intuits into the heart of the matter, translating images from hands to paper. She has done this at The Parliament of the World’s Religions, The Conference on World Affairs, Dawn of Interspirituality, Findhorn’s New Story Summit, and Seeds of Compassion with the Dalai Lama, to name a few from her website. 

Deborah's interpretive artist work at the Whidbey Institute in the 2019 and 2015 Winter  Gatherings : https://touchdrawing.com/2019-whidbey-winter-gathering/ and https://touchdrawing.com/whidbey-winter-gathering-2015/

Deborah says she usually casually tapes her artwork up on the walls at any given event - so right now we are very grateful and happy to have her work hanging with us over the month of July.

For more about Deborah here, on her website: https://touchdrawing.com/