Remembering Deanna Petherbridge (1939-2024)
The artist, writer, and educator Deanna Petherbridge (1939-2024) has left us, at 84, leaving a vast legacy of unique work. Yet, not many remember her name. Working predominantly with pencil, pen, and ink washes, Ms. Petherbridge buckled commercial trends, preferring to probe the edges of representational art – mostly through magnificent architectural visions.
Imagine applying Vorticist geometry to Piranesi, filter it through an Expressionist prism, and you might reach a starting point to delve into Petherbridge’s universe.
I find The Destruction of the City of Homs, as well as the panels in Drawing and the Domain of Politics, some of the most provocative visions of recent decades. One can’t escape the feeling that Petherbridge seems to engage in dialogue with history as a record of physical devastation. Ruins, of course, bring on the devastation of spirit and soul. They also result in divisions – and walls which separate us further. There is a reason why no human form is present in Petherbridge’s latest work. Her vision becomes that of organic sterility – the ultimate form of ruin.
In earlier work, Petherbridge displayed some playfulness, and there is an obvious meditational quality present in her Temples series. Some contemporary work, nearly Escheresque, might incite a hallucinatory feeling. With her research into the recent devastation of Syria, and many other places, Petherbridge’s art acquired alertness. I suspect it was her answer to capriccio – but more urgent.
Hers is not an architectural fantasy. It is an impression of “urbicide” (her term) we see now daily in the news. Perhaps we are desensitised already. We look at cities in complete ruin, ravaged by wars – not far from where we live. There are bodies under the rubble. In the “domain of politics,” war victims become nothing but staffage – mere compositional human elements in a landscape of battle.
Don’t look for staffage in the last work of Deanna Petherbridge. We are already extinct.
Thanks for sharing this, very interesting vision, I had never heard of her before.