Fine Art

Dierdre Boucher Stoneking is a self-taught artist from Baton Rouge, LA., art is a passion and in her blood. She grew up drawing and creating artwork of various forms and used art to tell the stories. Her every spare moment was spent filling the many notebooks with sketches of horses, her other passion. Her love of horses and riding, gave her the discipline and focus for her art and she attributes this background to her willingness to jump at opportunities when they present themselves.
Dierdre moved to New Mexico in 1981 and started a new adventure. Wanting to embrace her new home and exercise her exuberant huskey, she joined the Zia Sled club and learned to be a musher. She experienced the beautiful back country of NM from a dog sled, giving her a bountiful appreciation of a new subject matter and palette. She told her stories in pastels exclusively, for the next 15 years.

The desire to reignite her passion led her to oils; painting portraits, still life, landscape and animals, but the endless supply of bailing wire accumulating from the bales of hay, expanded her creativity to sculpture. Responding to a challenge from Terry Breedlove, owner of the Watermelon Gallery, to create multiple elements in a sculpture, using a single unbroken strand of wire. Dierdre took to the challenge, enjoying the mental planning, the sequence of twists and bends to go from one element to the next. Dierdre developed a technique she calls, 'Singulo Filo'. The first Singulo Filo piece depicted a horse standing under a tree, drinking from a pond. The wire started at the base of the horses tail, the anatomy is  built up until the wire coils form the horses muzzle which is touching the surface of the pond, creating the ripples, which reach the roots of the tree,  all from a single wire. This loose and fluid technique in a "less is more" goal to capture movement and emotion.

The constant challenge as an artist, to create something visually and emotionally is what drives her, that said, two years ago, she purchased the Yin and Yang of Painting by Hongnian Zhang and Lois Woolley.  She was moved by Hongnian's paintings.  Acting on impulse, she decided to see if he gave workshops and discovered a genre workshop in Tonawanda, New York.  Undaunted, she took time off from work and headed to NY.  This amazing internationally known contemporary master and his wife, accomplished professional portrait artist, Lois Woolley changed her life.  "To have the privilege and honor of working with artists at this level is priceless.  To have their friendship is a blessing."  As long as they plan to give workshops, Dierdre plans to attend.

Dierdre has participated and won awards in pastels, oils, miniature paintings and miniature sculpture at Masterworks, Encantada, and New Mexico Expo. Her work was exhibited at the Watermelon Gallery in Cedar Crest, NM until it closed in 2015. She was the featured artist in two shows there.
The last couple of years have been consumed building the art studio as well as building a new body of work.
Dierdre is currently exhibiting at the Tortuga Gallery. She is inspired by Hongnian Zhang, Christine Swann, John Asaro, Andrew Wyeth, Antonio Bouvard, Diego Velasquez, Johannes Vermeer and Norman Rockwell.