Artist Bio
SMD Sue Dorrington

Sue Dorrington (SMD) is a New Zealand artist and creative entrepreneur whose personal artworks explores, polarity, story telling and re-imagining.

Born 1961 in rural Hawke’s Bay. She moved away in 1979 to attend Wellington Polytechnic School of Design and completed study in Visual Communication Design. Followed by a period of working in the Adverting sector.

From 1998 she has been a co-director of Human Dynamo Workshop Ltd, based in Wellington. Working as a professional artist for Human Dynamo she contributed to many unusual projects, as an art director, painter and sculptor. Sue has collaborated on diverse projects and installations, from natural history models for museums, to props for film. Including the iconic interactive Life Size, Blue Whale Heart in Te Papa Museum.

Working independently as a fine artist from her preferred studio in Lyttelton. The vibe of Dorrington’s’ art practice is local and honest. Often starting with reclaimed flotsam and jetsam, already textured with a patina of an unknown sea voyage, her imagery carries an ancestral resonance, a sense of navigation, arrival, and departure.

Dorrington is repeatably drawn to a horizon line, paintings evoke the experience of a sea voyage, bringing and taking, tides and transformations. Seascapes are a recurring theme, however the stories of botanicals and landscapes are also explored in her paintings at times. 

Signing her artworks with her initials SMD of her full name – Susan Margaret Dorrington – she is commonly called Sue.

Instagram @s_m_dorrington