Sylvia Convey is an Australian visionary artist and co-founder of Tellurian Research Press.
Sylvia Convey was born in a displaced person's camp in Itzehoe near Hamburg Germany, on April 25, 1948. With her Latvian parents and sister Skaidrite she sailed to Australia and after a short time at the Bonegilla Migrant Camp the family moved to Tumbarumba in the foothills of the Australian Alps where she enjoyed a happy childhood. Sadly, after her family moved to Melbourne, Sylvia's father Stan died in a car accident.
Sylvia used her creative gifts to help her deal with the loss, and creativity became and has remained central to her life. At 17 she left home and started her own business which gave her financial security and enabled her to concentrate on her art. Sylvia's creativity has never been confined to one medium and her dazzling imagery has been utilised in quilt making, wearable art, jewellery, graphics and sculpture as well as painting. Her current mediums include photography and film making. Sylvia is also know for her handmade art books.
Images: Sylvia, Melbourne, 1970s; Sylvia with one of her paintings, 1970s; Glow (detail). Acrylic on canvas (2014) by Sylvia Convey; Sylvia Convey, 2015.
Sylvia used her creative gifts to help her deal with the loss, and creativity became and has remained central to her life. At 17 she left home and started her own business which gave her financial security and enabled her to concentrate on her art. Sylvia's creativity has never been confined to one medium and her dazzling imagery has been utilised in quilt making, wearable art, jewellery, graphics and sculpture as well as painting. Her current mediums include photography and film making. Sylvia is also know for her handmade art books.
Images: Sylvia, Melbourne, 1970s; Sylvia with one of her paintings, 1970s; Glow (detail). Acrylic on canvas (2014) by Sylvia Convey; Sylvia Convey, 2015.
Sylvia Convey talks with Ulli Beier
'My Fairy Story Book' - title page drawings by Sylvia Convey. Pencil on paper, 1955.
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I loved to draw as a child; I had no paper, so I used to fill up the front and back parts of books. I thought the end papers were for me! I filled up my 'grandparents' library. I got into a bit of trouble over that... these drawings were probably influenced by Latvian folklore as they were of forest spirits and animals...
The imagery flowed from my inner world, dreams, visions and submerged memories of war-time events I'd heard my mother talking about. I held my first exhibition at the Canberra Theatre Gallery. A friend, Dave Kain, a fine musician, wrote music for it. The show attracted considerable attention because it was unlike other art being shown at the time and was very favourably reviewed. Mention was made of gloomy Nordic mythology and comparisons were drawn with Bosch and Breughel. (Source: Outsider Art in Australia, ASPECT NO 35, 1989. p 55.) |
Handmade books
Sylvia has always loved books. She loves reading, drawing on end pages (see above), and making books. At any one time, Sylvia is creating five-ten handmade books, moving from one to the other depending on the day, her feelings, her creative impulse. She uses a variety of materials (textiles, handmade paper, cotton, thread) and techniques (drawing, mono-printing, painting, sewing). "Drawing is a whole brain activity," she says. "Spontaneous, at times, unconscious, self-soothing, satisfying, exploratory, memory-enhancing and mindful. It can be a pleasurable roadmap of thoughts and ideas." And Sylvia's handmade books are just that - roadmaps of thoughts and ideas. They allow others access to her personal storytelling offering human connections not only through the visuals she records, but through composition, design, functionality and form.
For more information about Sylvia's handmade books, please visit the section, Handmade Books.
For more information about Sylvia's handmade books, please visit the section, Handmade Books.
Textiles - art quilts, art dolls, wearable art
A recurring thread in Sylvia's work has been the blurring of boundaries between art forms. As a painter she rejected the primacy of canvas and used non conventional surfaces. As a printmaker she has used textiles as much as paper and her sculptural muse finds expression in wonderfully exotic and exuberant cloth dolls. She approached quilt making in a spontaneous rather than formal manner as it gave her life long love of fabric and colour complete expression. She loves the sensual, tactile pleasure of handling cloth – tearing, cutting, printing and painting it to produce shimmering life embracing forms.
Textiles provide me with a breadth and flexibility of expression which make other materials seem limited by comparison. They offer the texture and relief qualities of sculpture or pottery, the colour range of paint and the literal expressive potential of photography... Each doll I make has its own personality, its own special meaning, and each one carries ideas about the individual and the community. They look like ceramics but they're actually made from cloth, and I hand-paint each face, each expression. They are individuals just like you and me!" - Sylvia Convey, 2015
Sylvia Convey: Frozen Dreams
Sylvia with her painting, Adam and Eve (1973)
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A completely self-taught painter [Sylvia's] imagery contains certain elements found in Latvian folk mythology as well as echoes from the underground of the human soul. She finds it hard to define or categorise her work as most of her paintings are the result of spontaneous visionary experience occurring during the actual painting process. She has cultivated this visionary faculty ever since she experienced, as a small child, kaleidoscopic visions on the threshold of sleep. A strict Catholic upbringing and education only strengthened her desire to gain access to the worlds hidden deep within the human psyche. For her the creative art is a religious experience, not in an empty ritualistic way, but as a celebration of the joy of existence... The mood of her paintings range from the innocent to the sinister and the macabre. (Text by Tony Convey. Source: Outsider Art In Australia, ASPECT NO 35, 1989. p 62.) |