Sylvia Davidson enjoys her character cottage filled with beautiful art. Photos Louis Klaassen D4229-24
ONE of the first things to admire about Sylvia Davidson is her diversity as an artist.
Stop by her Hillcrest home and you’ll find a character cottage filled with beautiful art – much of it created by her own hand. Painting, stone carving, clay work – she more than just dabbles in each. Sylvia has had no artistic training but started painting at a young age after moving from Yorkshire in England to Kawerau in 1957, aged seven. She left Kawerau and moved to Whakatane 19 years ago.
“My first proper painting was when I was 13,” she says. “My school friend had a mum who was a painter and she said we could come after school and paint a picture.”
It’s not a picture she kept, describing it as “not very good,” but she remembers it vividly and the lessons she learned that day about distance and perspective.
Over the years Sylvia taught herself to paint, alongside other arts and crafts, with a preference for realism over abstract. She also discovered a love for figurative work. She has participated in a number of stone symposiums as part of the annual Summer Arts Festival and has painstakingly crafted some stunning figurines from air-dried clay that look out from display shelves in her home.
But her art of the moment is painting – sometimes with the addition of a little clay. She recently completed a series of colourful portraits of African woman, using the clay to build up the features of the faces. One of these paintings remains for sale at 4 Art Sake in Ohope. Sylvia won her first art award was in 1978 and since then has been a regular finalist in the Adam Portraiture Award and the Molly Morpeth Canaday Art
Award, in 2000 winning the public choice award and in 2002, best portrait.
Sylvia and Ohope artist David Poole are the featured artists at 4 Art Sake this month. Their joint exhibition opens at the Pohutukawa Avenue gallery on Saturday with refreshments and live music from 2pm to 4pm.
