Change, they say, is life's only certainty. For Deborah Roberts, this maxim has held true throughout her career as an artist. Roberts is formerly known for her narrative works depicting Norman Rockwell-inspired, African American community portraits. In recent years, however, Roberts' work has undergone a change for the contemporary, which has catapulted the Austin-native to new heights of success throughout the country. For Serie XIII, Roberts created False Impressions, a print showing dual figures of two women holding each other in a circumscribed circle-a motif Roberts uses in many of her paintings. Roberts describes one of these figures as an ancestral link to the second figure representing a culturally manufactured response to the past. Above the figures are four boxed images representing the different masks used to define beauty in American culture. Roberts explains that the boxed images are symbols of assimilation that black women have used to be perceived differently, false impressions about women of color that Roberts considers indefensible: "Our [African American] identity is tied up in how we are perceived and in misconceptions that have imprisoned our growth." Roberts' print is meant to challenge images of black women propagated by mainstream media and by centuries of racism because "if we choose to change the way in which we are viewed, then we change who we are as people."

Roberts received a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1987 and has exhibited works, among other places, in Austin, Chicago, and New York. Twice the artist has been proclaimed a day in her name by the mayors of Austin and Shreveport, Louisiana.

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