Deirdre Thorsen is an established New Zealand artist who has been exhibiting since 1975. She paints in a semi-abstract style, combining non-representational elements with a personal and symbolic mythology. Her works have a unique vitality and energy, exploring strong colours, light and dark, often in a grid composition. Over the last decade Thorsen has mainly painted in oils, both on board and on canvas. She also creates multi-layered painted wood assemblages, exploring shape in a variety of forms, for example the crucifix and totem. Her work is a response both to the Hawkes Bay rural area in which she lives, and to the mystical, rugged Takaka Karst country near Nelson, which she regularly visits. Movement, growth, the rhythms of the hills are explored in her own special landscape symbolism, combined with other symbols and images e.g. the distorted horse, Celtic horse masks and the cross. The cross is a recurring symbol, used not for its obvious religious significance, but compositionally, gesturally and metaphysically. Deirdre, who also signs her work...
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art education in 1971 and 1972, and has combined art teaching with performance poetry, and breeding and riding horses. Canterbury artists Leo Bensemann, Alan Pearson, Quentin MacFarlane, Philip Trusttum and Doris Lusk were early mentors and influences, and under her former name of Tupper she features in the book "The Life and Art of Alan Pearson", being the subject of many early portraits in the 1970's. As a reviewer writes "Thorsen writes and paints with a combination of passion and reserve that gives her work an edge of potency, yet allows it to become completely accessible." She presently lives in a farming valley in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, where she writes poetry, paints, and breeds and rides horses.

If you would like to keep up with 's latest art works, our website will be showcasing them as they become available, so please visit us regularly or even better, subscribe to our mailing list. 's paintings can be viewed, along with other fine art, at R.Ponders' RONA GALLERY, Eastbourne, Wellington.