Mass popularity is a stigma for Grahame Sydney

The Press - 15/11/2014

Demolition at Waipiata by Grahame Sydney

July on the Maniototo by Grahame Sydney

MIKE CREAN

 Painter Grahame Sydney in his studio.

He may be New Zealand's greatest living painter. Many people say he is. But Grahame Sydney claims his work is disdained by the nobs of the art world.

Public and critical acclaim means little against what Sydney calls art's "elite curatorial and institutional set".
The Central Otago painter is a fulltime professional, renowned by critics for his intricate craftsmanship and revered by masses who stare at his work and mutter in awe that "he has got it exactly right".
Crowds flock to his exhibitions. Canny collectors pay big money for his originals. He was appointed an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit for services to art. He is vastly popular but regrets "a stigma in popularity".
"My work is not in the leading public galleries," he says.

Curators and managers have "moved on from the likes of me into a more contemporary, conceptual realm. I am a representative of the 'painting-is-dead' school, to the academic avant-garde. [It is] a game without rules on a field without boundaries [where] craft and skill have been left behind".
More

Grahame Sydney - Paintings 1974 to 2014, Craig Potton Publishing, $99.99 (de-luxe edition $150).