“Sydney is a clever magician who plies his craft with great skill and subtlety, making paintings that are seemingly simple, but their plain reality tenders deeper emotions than simple recognition. You don’t just see the land here, you feel it… these hills, these skies give us a voice that is unique, a voice that is evoked by the art of Grahame Sydney. It is the voice of us all.”
Keith Stewart, Art Critic.
Grahame Sydney is one of New Zealand’s most significant and enduring artists. Awarded an ONZM in 2004 and then knighted in 2021 for services to the Arts, his work spans over 5 decades and encompasses egg tempera, oils, watercolours, lithographs, etching and photography.
Born and educated in Dunedin, he began his professional artist life in 1974.
Rarely exhibiting in recent years, Grahame’s works are held in private collections through-out the world and represented in the collections of New Zealand’s major galleries and museums. His exhibition “Regions of the Heart” toured New Zealand’s public galleries from 1999 to 2002 to record attendance numbers and his exhibition “Grahame Sydney: Down South. Recent Paintings 2001 – 2011” at Pataka Museum of Arts and Cultures, Porirua also drew unprecedented numbers.
Sydney is a strong believer that Art is one of the major building blocks of both a distinctive culture and national identity, so important in a relatively young country like New Zealand. He regards landscapes and a sense of place as an essential facet of national character, and that a spiritual connection to the land is fundamental to one’s sense of belonging.
These beliefs have led Sydney to active participation in several major environmental campaigns related to respect for natural landscapes – the lost fight against the damming of the Clutha/Mata-au River at Clyde, the successful opposition to industrial scale wind generation on the Lammermoor Ranges, the continued fight to eliminate exotic wilding pines, and most recently the issue of open-cast gold mining in the Dunstan Range. He follows in the footsteps of many of his contemporaries and role models including Don Binney, Michael Smither and Ralph Hotere amongst others.
His viewpoint resonates with many and resulted in his iconic painting ‘Moonrise on the Maniototo’ being gifted by the New Zealand Government (on behalf of its people) to Nelson Mandela as a representation of our national spirit. Art critic Keith Stewart writes [his painting] “tenders deeper emotions than simple recognition. You don’t just see the land here, you feel it… these hills, these skies give us a voice that is unique, a voice that is evoked by the art of Grahame Sydney. It is the voice of us all.” And at the 2011 opening of his Pataka exhibition the Mayor of Porirua spoke to the parallels of Grahame’s art and environmental work with Māori worldviews of ‘taonga’: acknowledging the land as a treasure, ‘tūrangawaewae’: places where we feel an inner sense of connection and empowerment and Grahame’s ability to evoke that through his art and ‘kaitiaki’: Grahame’s understanding we are guardians, not owners of the land and responsible for protecting its lifeforce for future generations.
Only occasionally collaborating with dealers, he mainly paints for an international private client list and generally produces no more than six works a year.
He has two adult children, Melissa and Nick, and since 2001 Grahame has lived and worked in a remote corner of Central Otago, close to his recurrent subject matter, with his wife Fiona and their dogs Teddy and Tinkerbelle.
Sydney has travelled twice to Antarctica as guest of the New Zealand Government. Unable to use his usual media due to the extreme temperatures he turned to the camera, which resulted in a resurgence of his long-standing love of photography.
He is the author of, or significant contributor to, several books including the much loved ‘Timeless Land’ written in collaboration with his close friends Brian Turner and Owen Marshall (now in its 5th reprint); ‘The Art of Grahame Sydney’ (winner of 3 Montana Book Awards); the comprehensive survey ‘Grahame Sydney Paintings: 1974 – 2014’; ‘Landmarks’ (again with Marshall and Turner), ‘Grahame Sydney’s Central Otago’ (photographs) and his Otago Goldfields history ‘Promised Land’ and ‘White Silence, Grahame Sydney’s Antarctica’ (photographs).
To learn more we recommend ‘Grahame Sydney Paintings: 1974 – 2014’, ‘The Art of Grahame Sydney’ and ‘Landmarks’, all of which include a significant selection of paintings and detailed essays by a variety of contributors. Or refer to the Resources page.