Martin Thompson (January 1956 – 4 September 2021) was a New Zealand visual artist. Thompson was born in

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...

in January 1956.Guthrie, K.,
Martin Thompson
", ''artistprofile.com.au'', 2018. Retrieved 25 February 2020. A self-taught artist, he gained fame in the world of

outsider art Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrate ...

for his grid-like drawings, created from plane fractals. A mathematical

savant Savant syndrome () is a rare condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrates certain abilities far in excess of average. The skills that savants excel at are generally related to memory. This may include rapid calcu ...

, Thompson calculated the formula needed for each artwork, creating images in which repeated patterns overlay at decreasing sizes and scales, much in the way of a Sierpinski carpet. Thompson described himself as "an old hippie", and with self-diagnosed

Asperger syndrome Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's, is a former neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of beha ...

, Thompson lived reclusively; his gifts in mathematics were balanced by difficulty to operate easily within social settings.Martin Thompson
" ''outsiderartnow.com''. Retrieved 25 February 2020. He spent much of his time obsessively working on his art, in a seeming attempt to create order from the chaos of the universe. Rather than working in a studio, much of his work was created while sitting at the tables of local cafés, originally in his native Wellington, and later in

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

, where Thompson moved in 2007. Thompson began his drawing career in 1980.Pickens, R. M.,
One knowledge worker: A review of Martin Thompson's 'Eight Works'
" ''The Pantograph Punch'', 22 February 2017. Retrieved 25 February 2020. Originally created using commercial A3 and A4 graph paper, hand-coloured in fine art pens, he expanded to include much larger works and – from about 2016 – coloured papers. Thompson was extremely particular about the pens which he used and the colours which they produce. Thompson's technique not only included the hand-marking of grids, but the deliberate physical cutting and pasting of areas of grid from one part of his works to another. Each finished work was created in two halves, a "positive" and a "negative" image of the mathematical formula which Thompson used, and as such all of his works have a two-by-one ratio in size.Martin Thompson
" ''Self-Taught & Visionary Art in New Zealand'', Retrieved 25 February 2020. In 2002, Thompson met with curator Brooke Anderson, who featured his work in a 2005 exhibition, "Obsessive Drawings", at the

American Folk Art Museum The American Folk Art Museum is an art museum in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, at 2, Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. It is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of folk art and creative expressions of ...

in New York. This led to Thompson's work becoming known outside New Zealand for the first time, and he built up a small but significant international following. Within New Zealand, Thompson had numerous shows at

City Gallery Wellington City Gallery Te Whare Toi is a public art gallery in Wellington, New Zealand. History City Gallery Te Whare Toi began its life as the Wellington City Art Gallery on 23 September 1980 in a former office block located at 65 Victoria Street, now ...

and regularly opened the exhibiting year at Brett McDowell Gallery in Dunedin every year since 2009. In 2015 he was the subject of a one-man show, "Sublime Worlds", at

Dunedin Public Art Gallery The Dunedin Public Art Gallery holds the main public art collection of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. Located in The Octagon in the heart of the city, it is close to the city's public library, Dunedin Town Hall, and other facilities such as ...

. Outside New Zealand, Thompson's art has been shown at New York's Ricco Maresca Gallery and

The Ian Potter Museum of Art The Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia was established in 1972. It houses the art collection of the University of Melbourne. Current director, Kelly Gellatly, was appointed in 2013. It is not to be con ...

, Melbourne. Thompson died in Dunedin on 4 September 2021, aged 65.

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Martin 1956 births 2021 deaths Artists from Dunedin Outsider artists Artists from Wellington City