Since her youth, Bibel's art has had a proclivity toward bright solids and geometric morphologies.  What is distinct about her art is the crisp precision, the definite form, the scientific execution. With only a few exceptions, the works have no nebulous shapes, no washes or blurs.  They appeal to the intellect and are of ideals.  As art consists of different voices, hers is one of quiet elegant order, the architectural shape of Modernism and also of the Japanese and Korean monastery.  They provide clarity of mind and tranquility even within a large array of shape and hue.

Bibel has sought to question our perception of reality. Just as color juxtapositions and line patterns can be visually perceived as both illusional depth fields and linear or regional distortions, so too our perception of the world, while real, is yet illusional from our restrictive perspective, which is governed and limited by our origins not into but rather from the universe. Thus rooted in the material aspects of biological survival, our senses shape our existence in terms of linear time and familiar three-dimensional space, despite the more expansive evidence of modern physics describing the underpinnings of the cosmos, with strange, nonlinear interconnectiveness and perhaps 11 dimensions. We need to view our essentially nonobjective world obliquely or askance to recognize its plasticity and potentials. Bibel's bold and bright geometric abstract acrylic paintings manifest her motto as if and signal this state of ambiguity and fundamental existential doubt, the mystery of deeper order, and the longing, the quest, for resolution.

Bibel uses acrylics and ink on canvas and occasionally plywood. Calligraphy pieces are sumi ink on Japanese paper.
 

Heart Sutra (2006) 

24 × 48 in. / 30 × 60 in. complete
 

Piano Jazz (2003),  18 × 36 in., complete
 

Debra Jan Bibel has been painting for nearly 40 years. Although bold colors and solids have often figured in her approach to art, since 1990 her works have been directly influenced by her experience in science (she has a Ph.D. in medical microbiology and immunology) and in her Zen Buddhist practices.  Until recently, the works had increasingly became abstract.  Klee and Mondrian (a Theosophist) are her philosophical and compositional models, but retrospectively she also finds some concordance with Karl Benjamin, Helen Lundeberg, Bridget Riley, and Ellsworth Kelly, challengers of perspective and illusion with the use of geometric solids.

Bibel is in the tradition of her family, as her uncle is noted artist of the Great Depression, Leon Bibel, and she is the daughter of furniture designer and artist Philip Bibel.  She also studied Chinese calligraphy under Kaz Tanahashi.

In addition to art, Bibel has a background in laboratory research, medical history, philosophy of science, ethnomusicology, and poetry. She has authored four books and numerous professional articles.