Painter Sybil Curtis was born in 1943 in Cunungra, Queensland, into a family that traces its heritage to early British pioneering settlers. At the age of thirteen, Curtis relocated to Southport, Queensland, to attend boarding school. She then moved to Brisbane where she worked in an entomology lab while studying a Bachelor of Science at the University of Queensland. Upon completing her degree in 1967, Curtis spent two and a half years living in Canberra before returning to reside permanently in Brisbane.
In the early 1970s, she became involved with the Brisbane art scene through Ray Hughes, then a prominent commercial gallery owner in that city (and later in Sydney). Curtis attended night discussion classes run by Hughes where her paintings were analysed and critiqued. She holds this experience as a major influence on her career. At the time, Hughes and one of the more high-profile artists he represented, Roy Churcher, were involved in The Institute of Modern Art, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. The Institute opened in 1975, and marked an important moment for the modern art movement in Brisbane.
Throughout her career, Sybil Curtis has worked simultaneously within the environmentalist sphere and as an artist. Before retiring in 2007, she was employed as Curator of the Inquiry Centre, Queensland Museum, where she led a small team of people who responded to questions from the public ranging from identification of potentially dangerous animals to cultural heritage. This position occupied three days per week, allowing Curtis time to pursue her artistic career. Curtis remained a strong environmentalist with a significant interest in natural history and geology. Nonetheless, Curtis often depicts industrial landscapes, for not only does she believe the natural landscape is “too brilliant and wonderful to reproduce” (pers. comm.), but she is attracted to the geometric patterning characteristic of mining and industrial sites, and shipping ports.
Curtis won the Bendigo Bank Tattersall’s Art Prize in both 2001 and 2003. Her 2001 winning entry, titled Triangle of Landscape (2000), was based on Illawarra Coke Works at Wollongong, while her 2003 entry, Pink and Grey Cyclinders (2003), was an abstract based on the Newcastle Steelworks. A coincidence of Curtis’ paintings is that almost every site she has painted no longer exists. Due to the transient nature of the industrial sites she paints, her works are one of the few records that remain.
Sybil Curtis held her first exhibition at the Kelvin Grove Campus Gallery in Brisbane in 1983. This was the first of many for Curtis; group and solo shows followed in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Between 1986 and 2003, Curtis’s solo exhibitions were predominantly held at the Victor Mace Fine Art Gallery in Brisbane, as well as Access Contemporary Art (now Brenda May) Gallery in Sydney. In 2004, Curtis became solely represented by Brenda May Gallery at Danks St Depot in Sydney.
- Writers:
- Emily Sandstrom
Catherine De Lorenzo
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2011
