‘Her Hills, For Anna 1971’ was a key work in my first solo exhibition in late 1972 at Moray Gallery, Dunedin.

Painted while I was teaching at the District High School in Cromwell in pre-Clyde dam days, it combines a doll my mother played with as a child (which I used in several paintings at this time) and a hillscape I had drawn at the western side of the Maungatua Ranges on the Middlemarch Road into Central Otago.

The impetus for the painting was a friend’s story which haunted me for several years, and which invaded my dreams too often at that anxious period of my life; I can see now that I was probably trying to paint that nightmare away, to diminish its nagging power.

SIR GRAHAME SYDNEY

Sir Grahame Sydney is widely regarded as one of New Zealand’s foremost contemporary landscape painters, known for his evocative portrayals of Central Otago and the Maniototo. Born in Dunedin in 1948, Sydney studied at the University of Otago and began working as a full-time artist in the early 1970s. His paintings engage deeply with the land and atmosphere of the South Island, capturing expansive spaces, weathered structures, and a pervasive sense of isolation with marked sensitivity.

Sydney’s paintings are distinguished by their clarity of light, precise composition, and emotional restraint. Rather than romanticising the landscape, he reveals its stark beauty and underlying tension, often depicting abandoned farm buildings, empty roads, and expansive skies. These works reflect both the physical environment and a psychological landscape shaped by memory, endurance, and the passage of time. Sydney’s significant contributions to New Zealand art were formally acknowledged with a knighthood in 2017 for services to the arts. His work is held in major public and private collections and remains integral to Central Otago’s visual identity.

Grahame Sydney, First Solo Exhibition, Moray Gallery, Dunedin, 1973

Private Collection, Otago
Purchased from Moray Gallery, Dunedin, 1973