Pauline Thompson
Pauline Thompson began her career in the early 1960s and was one of only a few women mentioned in Gordon Brown and Hamish Keith's influential book An Introduction to New Zealand Painting1839-1967. In the 1970s Thompson's supposedly "inactive" years spent childrearing she produced about thirty paintings of cyclic symbols and cellular forms. Her interest in cycles of growth, now readily equated with female imagery did not conform to preconceived notions of "high" art. Since the 1980s her preoccupation with the concept of change and degeneration has received critical attention. The more flexible boundaries of post-modernism that allows different tendancies in the visual arts to co-exist and acceptance to feminist practices formerly rendered marginal. Thompson takes recognisable urban scenes and layers them with symbolic potential. The results are atmospheric depictions that transcend the physical. She has work in most public Gallery Collections including the Auckland City Art Gallery.
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