Peter Siddell

A consummate technician, Peter Siddell painted obsessively detailed images of the urban environment, principally of Auckland, where he lived. His works are characterised by what Julie Roberts calls a ‘disturbing stasis’—a metaphysical calm synonymous with Surrealism and the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico. In his later years, Siddell’s perplexing meditation on modern life extended to sprawling urban panoramas in which people, power-poles and cars are all strangely absent.