Artist Statement
In 2026, the special 60th anniversary of the Sawdust Festival, Debra’s show features new images printed on canvas from two continents: Australia and Africa. Ancient Uluru (Ayres Rock) in the Australian Outback. Two hippos kissing in a hippo lagoon in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. A leopard with huge paws resting in a riverbed in MalaMala, South Africa. And interesting critters from “Oz” (Australia), include a baby wombat cradled in its rescuer’s arms, and a baby elephant crossing a dirt road in Chobe National Park, Botswana, with a family member in the lead.
“These trips can be challenging,” Debra says, “as I’m now disabled after a defective left knee prosthesis came loose in 2023. My wonderful surgeon had to carefully remove that prosthesis and piece my left knee and leg back together with metal due to so much bone loss.”
Debra couldn’t walk for six months, before and after her “re-do” revision surgery in 2023, and leaning on her stronger right leg also affected the knee replacement in that knee.
“I now call my re-do my ‘Robocop’ leg, which continues to swell,” Debra says, chuckling. “And I’ve been troubled by a painful pinched nerve in my lower back and thigh over the past year, making it difficult to walk. But I’ll continue to focus on working with a trainer to build strength, as well as losing more weight.”
Debra says she plans to continue living her childhood dreams by exploring the wildest of places, with assistance when she needs it.
“So I’ll take wheelchairs through the airport, walk with my Ferrari-red rollator walker where I can to walk more evenly and avoid excess weight on my right leg and back, and use my REI walking poles where a walker will not go.”
Artist Bio
When Debra Conkey was 8, she knew travel photography would be part of her future.
“I told my mom that I loved being the oldest of 6 and from a big family,” Conkey says. “She was my role model, and I told her that I loved kids, but my goal was to go to the Galapagos Islands. I probably got the idea from my parents’ National Geographic magazine, which is still my favorite.”
As a child, Debra developed an eye for composition with her trusty Instamatic. She especially delighted in shooting photos of the rampaging hippo while on her favorite ride at Disneyland: the Jungle Cruise.
“Years later, while on safari in East Africa after a big storm, the roads through Nairobi National Park were flooded,” says the professional writer and CSUF Emeritus faculty writing instructor, two areas that were also part of her childhood goals from age 8. “Suddenly, a huge hippo burst out of the water across the road from our Land Cruiser. It was very exciting and brought back the exact feelings I felt as a child on the Jungle Cruise.”
After years of shooting images as a child and teen, and starting a freelance writing and photography business while in high school, Debra earned both a B.A. and M.A. in Journalism at California State University, Fullerton, and further developed her skills, both on the job as a newspaper photographer-reporter-editor and as a freelance writer-photographer for magazines and corporate clients. Over her corporate communications career, she won more than 40 awards in both writing and photography from the International Association of Business Communicators, and was named Communicator of the Year by IABC as well as “Part-Time Adjunct Faculty Instructor of the Year” early in her 26-year, mostly part-time, career at CSUF.
Conkey’s spontaneous photojournalistic style continues to reflect the excitement of her youth: a white road and tree at sunset in Tuscany; a tiger in Ranthambore, India, passing behind a stand of leafless trees; colorful peeling doors from San Miguel Allende, Mexico, as well as from Morocco, Italy and Ireland; 8-foot-tall stone shrines of the Madonna in Italy and Smiling Buddhas in Angkor Wat, Cambodia.
“Visitors and clients often tell me they can feel the excitement and wonder I felt when viewing my images,” Debra says, laughing. “Especially Margo the yawning cat from Buenos Aires, who continues to be my most popular seller, year after year, because she makes people laugh. So one of my many themes—old doors, shrines, environmental portraits, wildlife (especially penguins), street art, landscapes, images from Italy— is humor.”