Design and Art Australia Online

Cindy Wider, nee White, was born in Brisbane in 1968. She grew up in Papua New Guinea and returned at the age of 11 with her parents and siblings to live in Australia. She began to engage in a full-time arts practice in Port Lincoln, South Australila, at the age of 23. Cindy moved to Queensland in 2002 where she met and married her husband Stuart Wider, who is also an artist.

Cindy was short-listed for the Wayne Kratzmann Art Award in 2011 and her artwork was included in ‘Connection’, a touring exhibition of the 2011 Queensland Regional Art Awards. This exhibition was curated by Michele Helmrich (Senior Curator, University of Queensland Art Museum) and was shown at the State Library of Queensland in 2012. Cindy was also selected as one of twelve artists for the ABC Open and Queensland Arts Council project ‘Artist by Artist’ in 2011, and a documentary was created about her artwork.

Her most recent solo touring exhibition titled, 'Rolling Hills of White Flat’, was well-received at the Outback Regional Gallery Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton, Queensland. In this collection of works, Cindy examines the lives of farmers’ wives in her continual journey to formulate the complex definition of what it means to be a woman. Acting as her muse, Wider’s eldest sister, Wendy, a wife and mother living and working on a cereal and sheep farm in rural South Australia, provides the inspiration for this compilation of art. “I wanted to celebrate her life and bring recognition to her and farmer’s wives in general,” Wider explains of the origins of this latest body of work. 'Rolling Hills of White Flat’ examines the reality and fantasy of life on the land from a feminine perspective. Seeking to inject high levels of authenticity into each piece, Wider left the life of a cosmopolitan artist to live with her sister and family on the farm. She wanted to learn, firsthand, how her sister managed to overcome the struggles of living and working in such a harsh and traditionally masculine atmosphere while still maintaining a strong sense of femininity and personal identity.

In 2013 Cindy moved with her husband and two young daughters to live in West Yorkshire, England, where she now lives and works as a full-time artist and art curriculum designer. She is represented by Porterfield’s Fine Art in Florida for licensing her images onto home décor products and as a fine artist by Sherlon Gerard in Los Angeles.

Cindy is also an author of art education books and manuals and has written four soft cover books as well as 37 E-books which together form the ‘Complete Drawing and Painting Certificate Course.’ This course is presented as a fully supported internet-based art curriculum with Cindy’s own personally trained team of professionals who teach the course at several websites including her own.

Writers:

Date written:

2014

Last updated:

2014