Grahame Sydney: Paintings 1974-2014 is a major retrospective survey of paintings from Sydney's 40-year career as an artist. His paintings of the Central Otago landscape and the wider South Island are known and loved by large numbers of New Zealanders at home and abroad, and have become touchstones that reflect the depth of feeling many people have for this country. His work now spans over four decades and encompasses oils, watercolours, egg tempera, lithographs, etching, photography and film. Rarely exhibiting, Sydney's works are held in private collections throughout the world and represented in the collections of New Zealand's major galleries and museums. His practice extends beyond landscapes however, and this book also reveals the full extent of that creativity. In Part One of the book Sydney has written a finely-turned autobiographical essay which traces the roots of his development as an artist, and which concludes with his decision to go full time in 1974. In Part Two, man of letters and New Zealand Poet Laureate Vincent O'Sullivan has contributed an extended essay about Sydney's paintings. Though the bulk of this second half of the book is dedicated to a collection of all of Sydney's major paintings, from 1974 to 2014. Grahame Sydney: Paintings is an important contribution to the literature of New Zealand art, a landmark publication that will be essential reading for those interested in art and our landscapes.

Author Biography

GRAHAME SYDNEY is one of New Zealand's senior artists, best known for his landscapes of Central Otago. His work spans four decades, and he has authored or been the subject of five books. The previous account of his work, The Art of Grahame Sydney (Longacre, 2000), won three Montana Book Awards and has been reprinted four times, as was the 1995 publication Timeless Land (with Owen Marshall and Brian Turner). Grahame Sydney continues to paint at his home studio in the Cambrian Valley in Central Otago, and maintains a close involvement with environmental issues in the South Island. In 2003 he was awarded an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for his services to painting.