Art2Muse

Ian Ginzberg and Sid Sledge have been going out over the last year trying to capture Eastern Suburbs beaches at night: Ian with a camera and Sid with a paintbrush. What the experience has brought out is what the two artists hoped for. When being out at night, sometimes very dark, sometimes a little dark, the photographer opens his shutter (for quite a long time) and hopes that enough light will fall into the lens; he may also quietly hope that some light effect like a night plane or a shooting star will pass before the lens’ patient eye.

Sid being a painter wonders if there will even be enough light to see the paint, but then he says, ‘sometimes only having a vague idea of the colour I am selecting can have surprising effects on what I am painting and helps me realise that chance is often a more certain guide in a painting, than knowing too much…’ Some of the paintings are completed en plein air, while others, especially the later ones, Sid admits to enjoying the spontaneity of starting the canvases at the beach and then taking them back to the studio to make sense of and elaborate them to completion.

Besides the obvious differences that the different media will produce, Ian is more interested in the idea of landscape and his sense lends the pictures a vast stillness and these stand in stark contrast to Sid’s imagery, which is predominantly figurative and of a more expressive mode. The sense that you get from seeing the work is how differently the same subject matter can be seen and responded to by the different artists. The artists have captured Tamarama; Coogee; Clovelly; Double Bay; Bronte; Maroubra and Bondi Beach.

Since making the departure from a scientist to being a full time artist, Sledge has discovered that science still informs the way he approaches art and that some scientific and evolutionary principles are very applicable to the practice of his art.

1995 to 2008 worked as a scientist lecturing and doing research

Selected Group Exhibitions

2005 Bamboo gallery, Jhb SA
2010 Art Beat Exhibition, Moriah College, Queens Park, Sydney
2011 Gallery 41; group painting exhibition

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2010 Coogee Art Lounge, Sydney
2010 Global Gallery, Paddington Sydney
2011 Waverley library - Bondi Junction

Artist Statement

I am just trying to paint with as much love as I can.. which boils down to a tug of war with love's enemy.. fear... it may be that simple.. fear seems to hate losing.. why.. I don't know.. and love... well... because of fear.. it scares us... so the fight goes on.. moment to moment... this fight.. when I attend it.. is the most primordial thing I know... for me it is the source and impetus for all we see around us...

-Sid Sledge

View Sid painting plein air