Deborah Oropallo was born in Hackensack, New Jersey. She received a BFA from Alfred University and an MA/MFA from The University of California, Berkeley. Although trained in painting, Oropallo’s practice incorporates mixed media including photomontage, computer editing, print technique and paint. Her composite works utilize layered visual sources to produce a dense interplay between time, place, form and content. The resulting works bear traces of the distortions that evolve or remain from digital manipulation and removal.

Oropallo’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the de Young, the Boise Art Museum and the San Jose Museum of Art; and in group exhibitions at the Whitney Biennial, The San Francisco Museum of Art and the Corcoran Gallery Biennial. Oropallo is also a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, the Engelhard Award and a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.