Deborah Niland (born 1950) is an Australian artist, well known as a writer and illustrator of children's books. Some of her most popular books include Annie's Chair, When The Wind Changed, Mulga Bill's Bicycle, and Chatterbox. In 2006 she won The Children's Book of the Year — Early Childhood, with her book, Annie's Chair.
Deborah and her twin sister Kilmeny are the youngest of five children of Australian authors D'Arcy Niland and Ruth Park. Deborah was born in Auckland, New Zealand and raised in Sydney, Australia.
Deborah and Kilmeny attended the Julian Ashton Art School in The Rocks, Sydney. Here they studied drawing and painting, taught in the traditional manner, by J Richard Ashton.
Both began their art careers by freelancing. In London, they received illustration work from Transworld and their first full-length picture book The Little Goat was published in 1971. Deborah and Kilmeny worked together on thirteen books. Their best known collaboration is an illustrated version of Mulga Bill's Bicycle, based on a poem written by A B Paterson. This classic picture book was first published in 1973, and has never been out of print. The newest edition is published by HarperCollins Australia.
Deborah's early career as a book illustrator involved collaborations with author Ruth Park (When The Wind Changed (1980),Roger Bandy (1977) and The Gigantic Balloon (1975)) and author Jean Chapman (Velvet Paws and Whiskers (1979) and The Sugar Plum Christmas Book (1977)). Recently, Deborah has both written and illustrated many children's titles including Annie's Chair (2005), The Big Green Thing (2008), and Let's Play (2007). Throughout her career, Deborah has illustrated more than 40 titles.
In addition to book illustration, Deborah has been a freelance contributor to The Australian Women's Weekly for over ten years, providing mainly humorous illustrations for articles and stories. Work for other magazines included Cleo, Family Circle, Choice and Reader's Digest.
When illustrating or painting, Deborah uses a variety of materials, including pen and ink, coloured pencil, acrylic paint, water-colour, pencil and digital media.
Deborah has continued to work in the fine arts, producing paintings for exhibitions and galleries. She has won several prizes, including The Robert le Gay Brereton Prize for Drawing, awarded by the Art Gallery of NSW and the North Sydney Art Prize (Open) 2009. Her work has been acquired by private and public collections.
