Laura Dickstein Thompson (she/her) is an artist, meditation practitioner, museum curator, art educator, and founder of the stress-reduction coaching business Breathing Space | Dr. Laura Thompson, LLC. She brings three decades in the arts and education fields to those who wish to build confidence in their innate wisdom and utilize their creativity as a healing practice to bring resilience, balance, and calm to their life. From 2002-23, Laura was MASS MoCA’s founding director of education + Kidspace gallery curator where she designed award-winning community partnership public programs and curated 30 exhibitions with notable artists. She holds a doctorate in education from Columbia University Teachers College and has added to her credentials a certificate in Meditation Teaching from the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, where she is on the R & R faculty. She is also a meditation instructor at the Berkshire Yoga, Dance, and Fitness Center and is an academic, teaching innovative ways to integrate mindfulness into art education at UMASS Dartmouth. She practices what she preaches in her personal abstract expressionist and symbolist oil paintings, and has a studio at NU Arts in Pittsfield, MA.
About my painting process
I connect to my inner world through mindfulness meditation and then paint whatever bubbles up for me. The feelings that arise during this practice could be of anger, love, joy, frustration, or mourning. On several occasions, I poked, scared, and stabbed the canvas with my paintbrush, beat it up with my hot energy, and came to stillness in the aftermath of a very expressive intuitive flow state. Time, sensations, and past experiences as a worker, mother, wife, daughter, sister, and friend seem to flash by me like the visions in my dreams.
To view and purchase my art lauradicksteinthompson.com
For stress reduction coaching breathingspace.art
Instagram @breathingspacepittsfield
LinkedIn laura-thompson-b5b2234
NU arts gallery + studios 