Marguerite Laing

Marguerite Laing is an Auckland-based New Zealand artist whose work explores the subtle territory between the visible and the unseen, the inner life of human experience and the emergence of form through colour, movement and gesture.

She is the great-granddaughter of Charles Blomfield, the celebrated New Zealand landscape painter renowned for his depictions of the Pink and White Terraces.

While living in London in the 1970s, she met the pioneering Scottish psychiatrist, philosopher and writer R. D. Laing, with whom she shared her life. Their years together took them across Europe and the United States. Following his death, she and their young son lived in Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains before returning to New Zealand.

Alongside her artistic practice, Marguerite has worked as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist for more than two decades. Her exploration of the human psyche, together with a lifelong interest in the symbolic and spiritual dimensions of existence, informs her painting.

Working intuitively, she allows colour, gesture and form to emerge without a predetermined image, inviting viewers towards an encounter with something felt before it can be understood.

Her works are held in private collections internationally, including London, Rome, California, Colorado, Seattle, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney and Auckland. The University of Glasgow’s Special Collections holds thirty-five of her original drawings and watercolours from her years with Laing. Six of my paintings appear on the covers of books published by The Professors Press in the United States.