Sandy Sykes
Bradwell-on-Sea
Concepts
Landscape is an essential part of her being and integral to her production. She does not paint landscapes but absorbs them along with their inhabitants. Sykes watches the behaviour of animals, birds, and insects; She take photos of clouds, the sea and the fields. These creatures and the natural movements of the elements leave significant marks and patterns in their wake. she records these moving and ephemeral drawings in sketchbooks, which are essential to the development of her ideas. The comedy and tragedy of animal posturing does not escape her and appears in her images, alluding to the social and political conduct of humans, and the inevitable consequences.
Processes and techniques
Drawing is the basis of her entire philosophy and vision and is essential to the production of her work in any discipline. She works in series to allow ideas, connections and allusions the space to move, to change and to re-form. Uncompromising and often humorous the drawings over the last few years have used pencil as the most basic, available and appropriate tool to render the most barren scenes of weather damage and the consequences of war. Imagery is often gleaned from newspapers and Sykes sticks together almost transparent ecological, hand made papers from India made from rags and grains in an effort to suggest the inconsequential, throw away nature of the finished pieces. Constructing paper panels of rough and transparent quality for the 150 cm x 100 cm prints she provides a paradox of images, attacked and coerced from all sides. Collaged and multi-layered they hide as much as they reveal. Nothing is stated; much is questioned. They are a colourful mass of inconsistency and blemish and an obvious product of the human hand. Unique and hand burnished and using many methods, the surface is built into a complex and intricate mapping of time and content.
Influences
Long-term research into boundaries and demarcation lines within and around present day cultures; people who are displaced whether by choice or circumstance, provide a basis for her paintings, prints, drawings and books. References to visual and literary influences throughout history and internationally invest her work with a wry humour. She brings together present and past mythologies, stories of destruction and survival and above all else, hope is always there. Text is often a factor. The novels of Michael Ondaatje have been exceptionally influential. The poetic and stunning novels of Cormac McCarthy have long inspired her. Set in wilderness and the desolation of the early American West, where values decline and itinerants' drift and change, he captures the bleakness of our morals as well as the barrenness of the terrain. She has a life long interest in Ancient Manuscripts and Palimpsests, their accumulated dilapidation and their captured history held in the boundaries of the bindings. Fire damage, worm holes and mice nibbles taped and restored, text over text, cut and defaced, sewn and conserved; each century adding and taking away.
Career path
Sandy Sykes was born in Yorkshire and is a painter, printmaker and maker of Artist's Books. She studied BA (Hons) Painting at Leeds Metropolitan University and MA and Fellowship in Printmaking at Wimbledon School of Art and Design. She now works in London and in her studio in Essex. Sykes won 2nd Prize in the '2nd Lessedra International Painting and Mixed Media Competition 2011' Sophia Bulgaria. She was an Award winner at 'International Print Triennial Krakow 2009' and was Nominated and Finalist for the Sovereign European Art Prize 2008. She was selected for a Solo show in Project Space P7 at 'The London International Art Fair 2007' and awarded a Residency at 'firstsite' Contemporary Art, Colchester 2006. In 2005 she was Winner of 'The Bank of Canada Award' for 'La Bienniale International D'estampe Contemporaine de Trois Riviers, Quebec Canada, she was also Prizewinner in 'Bird 2005 International Art Award' Beijing China, a Medal winner in the '2nd Seoul International Bookarts Fair '05' Seoul Korea and won the Annual Lome Award Scholarship in 2003/4. She also received a major Artist's Award from Arts Council England East in 2003/4. In 2002 Commissions East granted her funding towards the development of another artists book. She won a Residency to work on the Nagasawa Art Project in Japan Winter 2001. She was awarded a Research Residency in New York in 2000 to work on a three month Manhattan Graphic Center Scholarship. Since 1970 she has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally in solo and group shows, some of which have toured in Britain, Europe, USA and Russia. Represented in International Art Fairs in New York, Chicago and London, her work is in Collections such as the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Tate Britain and the V&A Museum.
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