Sylvia Siddell

Biography

In the summer of 1967 Sylvia Siddell attended the Auckland University summer school, where drawing and painting were taught by Colin McCahon, one of the best-known New Zealand artists. She was about twenty-six, and by then she had already lived for several years as an adult with a family.

She was born in Auckland in 1941. The exact date of her birth is not recorded; only the year is known. She studied at Avondale College, where her art teacher was a man named Field (his first names are not established). In 1960 she married the artist Peter Siddell; they had two daughters, Avril and Emily, and the younger became an artist too. Her professional training came in stages and, it seems, in snatches. In 1964–65 she took a course at the Auckland Post Primary Teachers’ College, which trained secondary-school teachers. After the 1967 summer school came night classes at the Auckland Society of Arts, where in 1970 she was taught by Louise Henderson. In 1975–76 she attended night classes at the Auckland Technical Institute. She began exhibiting regularly in 1975, and her work was shown throughout New Zealand.

In 1983 Siddell received a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grant. It was meant for the study of printmaking: she worked at etching, lithography and hand-painted screen printing. So etchings and screen prints were added to her painting, and she went on working in these techniques.

The main subject of her work is inanimate, familiar, unassuming objects. She drew on the European vanitas tradition, that is, the allegorical still life, but instead of skulls and hourglasses she took household things, through which she spoke of the joys, sorrows, struggles and frustrations of daily life. Such are the still lifes “Fire and Water” (2002) and “Out of the Frying Pan” (2007). The exhibition “Couches” at the Artis Gallery in 2005 is built on the same device: the couches are given manners and characters. The titles of her earlier shows at the same gallery speak for themselves: “A Rich Life” (1998) and “Fragments of Life” (2000). To my mind, the title explains in advance how she looked at her subject.

In 1994 Siddell took part in the exhibition “Unruly Practices” at the Auckland Art Gallery. It was a series of solo projects by feminist artists living in Auckland; alongside her, work was shown by Carole Shepherd, Claudia Pond Eyley, Mary McIntyre and Christine Hellyar. Her work is held in private and public collections in New Zealand and abroad.

In 2002, in the Queen’s Birthday and Golden Jubilee Honours, Siddell was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to painting.

She died in Auckland on 26 August 2011.