Even in her youth, Deborah Remington aspired to become an artist. She first took painting and drawing classes at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art as a teenager and then earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1955 from the California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Institute of Art.

From 1956 to 1958, she stayed in Asia, traveling to India, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma. She studied Chinese and Japanese calligraphy as well as sumi-e painting, a traditional Japanese ink painting technique that emphasizes the spontaneity of the gesture. Defined by the economy of lines and fluid, energetic brushstrokes, its characteristics can resonate with the concerns of abstract expressionism.

Upon returning to the United States, Deborah Remington presented three solo exhibitions at the legendary Dilexi Gallery and one at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in this iconic New York School style. In 1965, she moved to New York, where Remington simplified lines and motifs, always seeking what she called 'balance through imbalance.' Her abstract works from the 1960s to the 1980s, evocative of Rorschach tests, earned her great recognition. In the 1980s, she returned to a freer and more gestural painting style, which she maintained until the end of her life.