Hi, I'm Deborah — the artist behind Capesanti.

 

I was born in Italy in 1995 and I’ve been drawing since I was a child. I learned by watching my father, who used to draw animals as a hobby. He was self-taught and loved collecting reference photos from everywhere — encyclopedias, calendars, magazines. I would sit beside him, trying to steal his secrets just by watching.

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I later attended art school, which gave me a solid theoretical foundation but very little practical freedom. After graduating, I went through a long creative block and stopped drawing altogether for years. In the meantime, I worked all kinds of jobs to support myself, I lived on my own from a young age and needed to make ends meet. I’ve been a waitress, a barista, a kitchen assistant, a beach cleaner. I even enrolled in pharmacy school, then switched to biomedical engineering, tried different courses, and at one point I was juggling two or three jobs at once.

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I accepted exhausting conditions and burned myself out completely. I barely ate, barely slept, and my physical and mental health began to collapse.
I don't really know how I started drawing again, it just happened. After hitting rock bottom, I felt the urge to disconnect from everything and slowly began sketching again. My hand was shaky, and I had lost much of my skill, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was reconnecting with the human part of me that I had buried for so long.

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Over time, I realized that the city I was living in wasn’t helping me heal. So my partner, our parrots and I packed up and moved to Portugal — not with a perfect plan, but with a deep desire to start fresh and explore the world. Initially, I thought I would pursue tattooing. I practiced on fake skin, but while I was doing that, I started getting portrait commissions. One thing led to another, and within a year, I had found my own artistic language and chosen to focus my career on portraiture.

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Today, I create both personal and commissioned portraits, in a style that blends realism with emotional presence. I’m drawn to expression, light, color  but most of all, to the connection between the one who draws and the one who’s being drawn.
To me, a portrait is not just an image. It’s an experience. It’s a way of being seen through someone else’s eyes and I believe everyone should feel that at least once in their life.

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Alongside my art, I’m also creating short courses to help other artists overcome impostor syndrome and creative block because I know what it’s like to feel cut off from your own voice. And I also know how powerful it is to find your way back to it.