Deborah Poynton was born in 1970 in Durban and her youth was spent between South Africa, Britain, Swaziland and the United States. She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design from 1987 to 1989; since then she has lived and worked in Cape Town, South Africa. She has held solo exhibitions at Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, in 2006, 2004 and 2003, and at Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary, Johannesburg, in 2007. Recent group exhibitions include Family Relation at Warren Siebrits (2007); New Painting (KZNSA Gallery, Durban; Unisa Art Gallery, Pretoria; Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg; 2006) and What Lies Beneath at Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen (2006). Her work is in the Scheringa Museum of Realist Art in the Netherlands, among other collections.