Deanna Petherbridge (CBE) is a South African-born artist, writer and curator based in London, whose drawing practice focuses predominantly on pen and ink, although she has also produced large-scale murals and designs for the theatre (including the Royal Ballet). A fierce defender of the vital importance of drawing in contemporary practice, and drawing as both a practical and theoretical endeavour, Petherbridge is also the author of Primacy of Drawing: Histories and Theories of Practice (2010), in which she affirms the significance of drawing as visual thinking in western art from the 15th century to the present, and confirming a long historical commitment to the primal importance of sketching in generating ideas.

Petherbridge’s draughtsmanship stands apart from that of many of her contemporaries, favouring precision and meticulous detail over gestural spontaneity. She does not work from preparatory sketches or from photographs but starts directly on the page.

This recent work reveals the artist’s fascination with India, Goa in particular, where the artist has resided frequently in recent years. With careful lines and subtly applied wash, this work reveals the artist’s acute eye for nature and its degradation. The predominantly architectonic forms of her drawings act as a structural metaphor for complex subjects and the human condition. Here her comments are directed to the surge of ‘hideous’ urban sprawl that is devouring the once unique landscape and building traditions of Goa and Kerala in South India.

Gift of the artist, 2021

'Deanna Petherbridge, Drawing and Dialogue,' with a preface by A. Griffiths, Circa Press Ltd., 2016.
pp. 102, 103

Deanna Petherbridge, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, December 2016 – June 2017

Deanna Petherbridge : Places of Change and Destruction, Art Space Gallery, 6 September-14 October 2017

Inscription: recto, lower left, enclosed in circle : artist's monogram, Delta Pi