40
GRAHAME SYDNEY - The Edge of the Simpson Desert
Estimate:
$100,000 - $150,000
Starting Bid:
$70,000
Live Auction
Important & Rare Art
Size
101 x 152 cm
Description
Oil on linen
Condition
To request a condition report, please contact us at auctions@artcntr.co.nz or phone +64 9 379 4010
Signature
Signed & dated 1991
Provenance
Private Collection, Auckland
Acquired from Fine New Zealand and Foreign Paintings, Photography and Prints, Webb’s, Auckland, 14/12/1998, Lot 65
Acquired from Fine New Zealand and Foreign Paintings, Photography and Prints, Webb’s, Auckland, 14/12/1998, Lot 65
Literature
In 1990 I was invited to join the Headmaster and a party of senior teachers from Melbourne Grammar School on their
annual four-wheel drive escape into the Australian Outback. This time they were venturing through Adelaide, up to Coober
Pedy and then branching north-eastward through Oodnadatta, across the Simpson Desert to Birdsville, down the Birdsville
Track on the western flank of the Flinders Ranges and home. It was a memorable few weeks, day after day crawling slowly
through the endlessly repetitive, low-dune flatness of the desert, camping each night. But the monotony was relieved by
two things. First, the entertaining company inside the vehicle: to pass the time of day as we trundled along each one of us, trusting the privacy of our big white Toyota, told their life stories - very much a modern Canterbury Tales confessional
( The Headmaster’s Story, The Headmaster’s Wife’s Story ) - and secondly, the extraordinary intensity of the sunsets in that dry, pristine atmosphere. I felt I was on another planet, and, easily ignoring the small caravan of vehicles, that I was witnessing
exactly what human eyes would have seen 100,000 years ago.
I did four or five paintings from that experience. I loved the naturally heightened colour and the surreal, other-worldliness of that ageless landscape, and it stays with me still.
- Sir Grahame Sydney
I did four or five paintings from that experience. I loved the naturally heightened colour and the surreal, other-worldliness of that ageless landscape, and it stays with me still.
- Sir Grahame Sydney
