Sir Peter Siddell loved the bleak tapestry of the wild west coast, particularly the Karekare cliffs and seascape. His first exhibition in 1972 contained many small exquisite cliffs and rock images and a rare Siddell, Girl at the Gate, had a human figure.
The exhibition was a sellout and he immediately retired from teaching and became a full-time painter.
Born in the heart of old Auckland in Grey Lynn in 1935, he was a self-taught painter who was educated at Mt Albert Grammar School and Auckland College of Education. He left school to first become an electrician.
As a schoolboy, he delivered the morning newspapers on his bike around Ponsonby and Grey Lynn to rows of villas that he would later paint and transpose to unpopulated Auckland landscapes and fields of uncut grass. His landscapes depicted an unquiet stillness and his large canvases would boldly take in the whole coastline from Karekare to Whatipu.
His magic realism of city and townscapes took the viewer into a secret journey of the interiors of pristine suburban double-storey, finial topped houses standing empty on the volcanic Auckland landscape.
