Grahame Sydney

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Grahame Charles Sydney, born in 1948 in Dunedin, is a New Zealand artist based in Central Otago. He works as a painter, printmaker, photographer and writer.

He studied English and Geography at the University of Otago. He began his career as a secondary school teacher in 1971, spent time in London and Europe, and started painting professionally in May 1974. In 1978 he won the Francis Hodgkins Fellowship.

Sydney has lived in Dunedin, near Cromwell, and in Central Otago. He did not attend art school, saying he wanted to learn from Vermeer and hoped to become a seventeenth‑century Dutch painter. He has two children with his first wife Roslyn and now lives with his wife Fiona in the Cambrian Valley.

His art often focuses on the quiet, empty landscapes of Otago and the loneliness of people in remote settings. He also paints figures, frequently of his wife Fiona. Central Otago landforms, especially the Pisa Range, are common subjects. Critics compare his work to Hopper, Hammershoi, Pratt and Wyeth, but with a strong New Zealand identity.

Sydney has had major exhibitions and his work is in important collections, including the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, as well as private collections around the world, including Elton John’s. The New Zealand government gave a painting of his to Nelson Mandela. He rarely exhibits publicly today, often collaborating with galleries but mainly working for private clients. In 2016 he said he does not take commissions and paints slowly; in a good year he might finish six works.

Honours: In 2004 he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to painting, and in 2021 he was knighted as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to art.

Books and publications: Grahame Sydney Paintings: 1974–2014 (2014); The Art of Grahame Sydney (1999); Timeless Land (1995). Photography books include White Silence: Grahame Sydney’s Antarctica (2008) and Grahame Sydney’s Central Otago (2011). He wrote Promised Land (2009), a history of the Otago goldfields, and co-authored Landmarks (2020) with Brian Turner and Owen Marshall.

Sydney has said, "My work is not in the leading public galleries... I am a representative of the 'painting-is-dead' school."