"#13" Painting

Marguerite Laing is a 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.

Born in Auckland, 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 between London, the mountains of Europe and the United States. Following his death, she and their young son lived for several years in Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains before returning to New Zealand.

Alongside her artistic life, Marguerite has maintained a psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice 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. Her paintings invite the viewer beyond the immediately recognisable, towards an encounter with something felt, perhaps, before it can be understood.

Her original works are held in private collections in 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.