Sleigh focused much of her work on images of men, often relying on historical paintings as a basis in which she reversed the roles that men and women portrayed.

“I wanted to give my perspective; portraying both sexes with dignity and humanism. It was very necessary to do this because women had often been painted as objects of desire in humiliating poses. I don’t mind the ‘desire’ part, it’s the ‘object’ that’s not very nice.” - Sylvia Sleigh

Sylvia Sleigh was born in Llandudno, Wales in 1916. She studied at the Brighton School of Art in Sussex, England and had her first solo exhibition in 1953 at the Kensington Art

Gallery. Sleigh married the art critic Lawrence Alloway who become the Assistant Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and later went on to become the highly regarded senior curator at the Guggenheim Museum - New York who is credited with bringing Pop Art to its height.

Sleigh’s personal experiences as a young female artist in the 30’s and 40’s led her to become involved in various feminist based art groups. In the1970’s her large-scale portraits forced art audiences to recognize women’s equality and have led to her work being studied in universities worldwide.

Sleigh was awarded the Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Professorship at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she taught art. She has also taught at the New School for Social Research in New York City and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Sleigh was a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1982, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 1985. Her work is featured in hundreds of art publications and many are in the collections of museums including the National Portrait Gallery, London; Smart Museum of Art, Chicago and the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York.

Sleigh lives and works in New York City, continuing a career that has spanned over half a century. She currently exhibits with the I-20 Gallery in New York City.

Sylvia Sleigh Arakawa & Madeline Gins 1971 Oil on Canvas 53 x 78 inches Courtesy of I-20 Gallery, New York

Sylvia Sleigh: I was born in Llandudno, North Wales in 1916 at my father’s Mothers small beautiful estate on the Great Orme. I was supposed to be a boy.

Art Interview: What did your parents do for a living?

Sylvia Sleigh: My father was in the army during the First World War when he married my mother. She was living with his mother at the time but they didn’t get along very well. So, she ended up renting a house in town to get away from her. While my father was away at war, he sent all his money to my mother. But she spent it all, so that was a very bad beginning. My mother moved to my maternal grandmothers’ house when I was just 18 months old. When I was 6 years old my parents divorced.

Art Interview: Divorcing was unusual for that time.

Sylvia Sleigh: Yes, it was very shocking.

Art Interview: So were you raised without a father?

Sylvia Sleigh The Court of Pan (after Luca Signorelli) 1973 Oil on Canvas

Art Interview: What did your mother do for a living?

Sylvia Sleigh: She didn’t do anything for a living; my grandfather gave her an allowance, but she painted, wrote poetry and novels.

Art Interview: What did your grandfather do for a living?

Sylvia Sleigh: He had retired from the army and was very old by then, in his 70’s I suppose.

Art Interview: Did your mother encourage you to become an artist?

Sylvia Sleigh: Yes, she was totally my inspiration. She turned the billiard room on the top floor, into a bed sitting room. She filled this room with beautiful furniture and art books. She had many art magazines, which were quite expensive in those days, and they were the only place where you could get good color reproductions of artwork. She allowed me to see them all and talked to me about them. I must have known about every European artist by the time I was 9. She also read books to me like the Iliad and the Odyssey. But eventually she sold all the books and furniture and went to South Africa.

Art Interview: How old were you when she left for South Africa.

Sylvia Sleigh: I was about 9.

Art Interview: You didn’t go with her?

Sylvia Sleigh: No, I stayed with my Mother’s mother. My mother went with her second husband to Africa. He was not a very nice person. By the time they had got to there he had spent all their money gambling and had gotten her pregnant. When they arrived he left her or she left him. Then she made her living cooking and telling fortunes: she could tell horoscopes and use Tarot cards. She thought she would make her way back to England by working across Africa. Luckily for her five years later my poor grandfather died and she received enough money to come straight home.

Art Interview: You went on to attend the Brighton Art School ( Now the University of Brighton - Dept of Art. )- why did you choose to go to an art school?

Sylvia Sleigh: Well, I wanted to be a painter. Nobody wanted to spend any money on me and that was the cheapest thing I could do, not that that was why I wanted to do it. It was a municipal school, which was very good if you intended to acquire a teaching degree. But like a fool I didn’t. I thought it was rather stuffy to be a teacher. I wanted to be a portrait painter.

Art Interview: Did you have to work while you were studying?

Sylvia Sleigh: No, Granny was quite comfortably off. In fact sometimes she used to forget and pay the art school twice.

Sylvia Sleigh Paul Rosano Reclining 1974 Oil on Canvas 54 x 78 inches Courtesy of I-20 Gallery, New York

Sylvia Sleigh: That was fairly normal in those days, women simply weren’t considered seriously. Of course, comments like that made me very depressed. But luckily I was interested in drama. So, I helped found a dramatic society with a few other students. I did readings, directed plays and acted.

Art Interview: Did your professors’ comments motivate you toward the feminist movement?

Sylvia Sleigh: Well, I was bit motivated already because my father was so unkind to me. My grandmother always said she hated men and that you shouldn’t have anything to do with them. I asked my mother, “Do you believe men and woman are equal?” and she said “No” and I asked, “Do you think you are inferior to men?” and she said “No.” Then I asked her about me and she said: “Well, you’re not equal. So that was my beginning of feminism.

Art Interview: While you were attending the Brighton School of Art were there any professors there that supported you or influenced your career?

Sylvia Sleigh: No, the people who were very supportive of me were the art teachers from my previous school. I went to a girls’ public day school trust in Brighton and there was an art teacher there who was extremely kind and helpful. But I was taken out of that school and went to a different school to please my father, which was a big mistake. When my mother took me away she put me in a decent school and the art teacher there was extremely nice to me and very helpful. So, that encouraged me.

Art Interview: I understand that you have taught at Northwestern University, The New School and the State University of New York. How have your teaching methods differed from those when you were attending school?

Sylvia Sleigh: Well, I don’t really know. One thing that made me very angry was at Brighton Art School was that the female students were paying the same amount of money to attend but were still being treated in a second-rate fashion.

Sylvia Sleigh Felicity Rainnie Reclining 1972 Oil on Canvas 42 x 60 inches Courtesy of I-20 Gallery, New York

Sylvia Sleigh: Probably my mother.

Art Interview: Was it your intention to become a professional artist when you left art school?

Sylvia Sleigh: Well, when I left Brighton Art School I was supposed to make my own living because Granny was dead by that point and my family on both sides said that they couldn’t support me. So I was on my own.

Art Interview: What did you do in order to make a living?

Sylvia Sleigh: Well, I had taken a commercial course when I was at Brighton Art School and I had a portfolio of pieces to show but they didn’t tell me how hard it was going to be. I went round to all sorts of studios and they wouldn’t even look at my work because they didn’t want a woman in the studio. I had made my own clothes as a child so I thought that this was the only thing I had left. I went to a rather elegant shop in Bond Street and asked them if they would train me in tailoring and millinery. They said to me that I could work in the shop, and I was detailed off to dress the people that were trying on the clothes. Every customer had a lady to look after them. It was very interesting, one of the most exciting things was undressing Vivian Leigh.

Art Interview: I understand that you had your first solo show in London at the Kensington Art Gallery in 1953, how did you manage to get into that gallery.

Sylvia Sleigh: I can’t remember how I got into the gallery. But Lawrence Alloway, who I later married, was given a job there by my first husband whose name was Michael Greenwood. The dealer, Peter Coeham who ran the gallery was a very nice man and he said and I quote "I would never ever have a woman artist in my gallery", but he recommended me to another gallery. I had a show but it wasn’t a very useful gallery. It was the kind of gallery where retired MPs had their work, so it wasn’t very serious but I did have one piece of luck through that gallery: I had one of my pieces in The Radio Times.

Sylvia Sleigh Maureen Conner and Paul Rosano: Venus and Mars 1974 Oil on Canvas

Sylvia Sleigh: Well, it wasn’t that unusual. There were a lot of women artists in America who were quite famous already. I think you just had to be quite influential. I remember when Michael was working at the Footh’s Gallery, one of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters was showing there and I thought her work was awfully nice but I never heard anything about her since. I think her name was Lady Bativca Rainser. When we met her, she was very charming.

Art Interview: Your second husband, Lawrence Alloway, was an art critic at that time. He went on to become a very influential curator who's work affected the history of modern art. How much influence did he have on your career as an artist?

Sylvia Sleigh: Well, I was already an artist when I married him. It wasn’t until 1954 that we married. He often sat for his portraits and was very supportive.

Sylvia Sleigh: Well, I started painting seriously when I was 25.That was when I decided that was what I would do and anything else was just to keep my head above water.

Art Interview: He was very active with the Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

Sylvia Sleigh: Yes he was indeed. We spent 7 years in London while he was at the Institute.

Art Interview: I assume that you also went to those meetings?

Sylvia Sleigh: Oh, yes, I always went to any lectures that he gave, I thought he gave wonderful lectures.

Art Interview: How did those meetings influence you? Were you able to meet other influential artists?

Sylvia Sleigh: I became interested in all styles of paintings. However, they weren’t very useful to me because they were all about abstract artists. Lawrence didn’t know any realist painters - well, he did know one other than myself, but he became an abstract artist in the end.

Art Interview: Later Lawrence became the assistant director at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London?

Sylvia Sleigh Situation Group Portrait 1961 Oil on Canvas 48 x 72 inches National Portrait Gallery, London

Art Interview: At some point he became very interested in what is now, thanks to him coining the phrase, called Pop Art. How did the transition of his interest from abstract art to pop art affect your life together?

Sylvia Sleigh: Well, I was always interested in anything he was interested in because he was so brilliant and he could explain things that no one else could. I was pleased in a way because Pop Art is nearer to realism. But Lawrence and I were concerned about the young artists that we knew who painted large abstract work.

Art Interview: I understand that you moved to New York in 1961.

Sylvia Sleigh: No, we moved to Bennington, Vermont first. We were there for a year in 1961 and then moved to New York in 1962.

Art Interview: Was that when he became the curator of the Guggenheim Museum in New York?

Sylvia Sleigh Imperial Nude Paul Rosano 1977 Oil on Canvas 42 x 60 inches Courtesy of I-20 Gallery, New York

Sylvia Sleigh: Not real opportunities. I did have an exhibition at Bennington College that was put on by Paul Feeley, who was the head of the art department there. Then we met a contact through Alexander Liberman’s son in law, Cleve Grey who was a good friend of ours and he recommended me to the Byron Gallery where I participated in a group show and eventually that led to a solo show there.

Art Interview: Do you believe that the selection process for museum curators has changed over the years?

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