Syndy Esteves
Cinzia (Syndy) Esteves is an Australian visual artist and has a Bachelor of fine arts with honours from University of NSW, graduating in 2018. Syndy then attended classes at Julian Ashton in CBD Sydney for human portraiture in 2019/2020.
Syndy has also received recognition with Luxemburg art prizes having received four off certificates of artistic achievement of the Pinacotheque awards from 2021 to 2024. Also, of late, received an honourable certificate of the ‘Collectors art prize/art legends of our time’ by Art Collectors Magazine in August 2025.
Cinzia, known as Syndy (being her art moniker name since childhood), previously worked in the architectural industry and although respected and proficient in her field, she found herself always thinking of following her dream of becoming a professional artist. Thus, she resigned and pursued her dream by picking up a paintbrush for the first time in 2013.
Syndy’s passion is meaningful art and portraiture travelled through Mnemonic experiences & the ethereal. Syndy is an oil painter, draughtsperson, writer, poet, and a wild brumby advocate. Her artwork stretches the boundaries between art & politics by giving a voice to the wild brumbies afflicted by Australian laws of today. Brumbies are Wild Australian horses, being post native, having waler blood and other rare blood breeds as their DNA make-up as they evolved from their ancestral counterparts landing on the Australian shores with the first fleet in January of 1788.
Today they are known as wild brumbies and roam Kosciuszko National Park in NSW Australia, they are subject to ground and Aerial culling and labelled as an Invasive Species by Australian laws. Syndy in juxtaposition, voices each brumby Individually, as sentient species, attaching their stories, history, and family lineage via Portraiture.
‘When I see a field of dandelions, all I see is a sea of wishes. Be their Voice in the wind.’
Syndy, your practice sits at a charged intersection where portraiture becomes a philosophical and ethical lens for rethinking human-animal relationships. How do you see the tradition of portraiture, so deeply tied to human subjectivity, being transformed when you extend it to brumbies as sentient subjects with their own histories, hierarchies, and familial ties?
I see portraiture tied to human subjectivity but also to history. From the first cave paintings we see the everyday life of man and animal. It has been part of us evolving through the ages and refined in art till today. This ties the human as a sentient with symbols and evolved conceptions of portraiture today, the gaze, entering the sentient in composition, their status, family and hierarchy, the history and lineage. The individual sentient enters by his personality, so the subject redefined in portraiture via these discourses. Hence, it was inevitable that I would use portraiture not just for the human interpretation understood, but also for the sentient aspect it personifies.
Unlike human portraiture, animal Portraiture is loosely depicted unless a family pet, or in environmental compositions, or for showing man at work on the land and so on. Horses are seen mounted in wars & other, or as a family ‘pet’. With horse racing you may see the winning stallion and the perfect specimen. Then the wild horse, by horse art enthusiast as the wild magnific stallion sometimes fighting another stallion. For brumbies many use the ‘silver brumby’ as an ethereal depiction or the historical of ‘the man from snowy river’, or the wild horse in nature. But this tells us nothing of what the everyday life is for a wild brumby today. That is subject to managemental laws of Australian Government legislations set on brumbies and the impact on them by man.
So, I had to think outside the box. I started theoretically with ‘Prometheus’. It took time to vision how to show the brumby. As for my first 2 brumby paintings I used my ‘artist licence’ and de-pictured many types of horses to create him. Hence my first, ‘The grey divide of the brumby’, an unknown horse, but recognisable as a brumby, impressionistic in feeling. The grey depicting the ‘grey political divide’ and the ambers, the fires of 2019 in KNP. It gazes but not convincing me yet. I realised that then, with human portraiture we ask ‘whom’ the subject is. I want the audience to ask and maybe recognise him/her. We depict thus the individual. Hence, it was by adding their story, of each individual brumby, their family history, their personality their everyday life, we see a picture forming. A picture of a sentient.
This was not an anthropomorphic depiction, but an ‘equal’ status of a sentient within their own species, not human but still sentient. A sentient who’s life matters. A sentient of his own species. Hence, by tying him to such a close relation between human and our relationship with portraiture, I bring the brumby closer ethically to say, do you see him now? Would you like to know who is he? I thus give the brumby their own identity and position in this world via portraiture.
You have drawn a careful distinction between advocacy and activism, noting that your aim is not to agitate politically but to illuminate ethically through art. Could you expand on how this subtle difference shapes the way you frame your brumby portraits, and how you imagine audiences internalizing advocacy as a visual, rather than rhetorical, experience?
I make the distinction between advocacy and activism as advocacy promotes change by information and voice, where activism deliberately states the laws, one wants to change. I would like to see some laws abolished, but I do art, I don’t voice politics. I voice the brumby. I am above all an artist. I don’t want to dictate or persuade, but only to put a thought out there. To say, hey listen, did you know what a brumby really is? Why are they labelled as such? Is this ethical? Is culling humanistic in feeling?
I don’t want to make a ‘political statement’ I want to make meaningful art. I want the audience to engage. To create a conversation, spark a moment of seeing things outside our human conditioning. Conditions, whether based monetarily, culturally, or by individuals, we are all conditioned by our own experiences and citadels. I thus want my viewer to see outside the conditions they experienced and see ‘them’. To thus, step back and look at the whole picture, see the brumby, not the conflict created by man.
Horses were and are generally seen as a commodity. How many horses, were given away after a child grew up and rode him no more and why? We see this with our pet dogs too; they get old or people move or in hardship and off to a shelter goes the family pet. They are sentient and need companionship as their make up so they suffer terribly not knowing why they were abandoned by their family as we are family to them not pets. Humans, dogs and horses need companionship. It is part of our make-up. We need family, relations, and above all love and acceptance. Even introverts like me, need this.
Internalising the visual via portraiture, I talk to the audience via one of the oldest forms of communication. I give you a ‘gaze,’ a seen, a movement. I take the sentient horse into our realm of understanding not just rhetorically, but beyond that. As each brumby is individual and has a story. He is unique one off. No one person is the same, no one brumby is the same. I thus wish my viewer to use his imagination and take him somewhere else. The world of the Brumby and his everyday life, impacted by our human condition. By giving the brumby the power of individuality, by giving a name, history, and family background I relate to you the sentient. One at a time. Each unique, each different. Each with a different story.
Painting and portraiture are so tied to our psyche that it will always be part of us. So, why not extend this form of communication for other sentients. Tying my research, a book ‘Animal Liberation’ by philosopher Peter Singer, in rethinking how we see animals.
Your works often emerge out of mnemonic experiences, lived encounters, and a chain of research that threads together philosophy, politics, and the tangible presence of brumbies. How does this layering of memory, theory, and direct contact manifest materially in your studio practice, and what role does time, such as slow observation and 180-hour sittings, play in deepening that dialogue?
The mnemonic, ethereal images and dreams are the threads. The mnemonic, experiences that have been lived or felt, the latter helps interpret such experiences. The theories tie all the genres together helping me think out the translation between the experience through the ethereal in painting. Two paintings are examples on how I manifest them ‘materially’. One, the painting of Spirit, the other, Arrow boy. Both were started never having seen a brumby. I used references from Karen Ferguson, a wild brumby photographer that uses her art as therapy. Spirit was already rehomed. Arrow boy still in KNP a lone bachelor. He already had the Arrow incident (he and another stallion were shot by arrows. Arrow boy survived, his mate did not.)
In late February 2022, I visited Clearview Brumby Rescue. I experienced my first brumby, Spirit & his new mob. By then, he had finally taken to his new family as he was mourning his KNP family. I found a gentle spirit, paternal and experienced in having a family. Curious but reserved, watching his family as they came to greet me. Eventually he came and we bonded. On my last day I went to say goodbye, the whole mob came to me. Spirit started to walk to the gate looked at me looked at the gate, repeatedly. He wanted me to let him out. Hence, he understood he was free but not like before. This sparked the connection of his history and as I looked around, I saw the fast acreages, the mob roaming and the fence all around. The thread freedom was born.
Back home, I felt, with Arrow Boy’s painting, something amiss. ‘The ethereal experience’. His background was yellow/green grass, Spirits was just primed canvas. I remembered the colours of ground and sky. I remembered my research on blue. Blue was unseen before as blue or at least un-named till the colour cyan was named first. This was perfect to relate freedom, unseen and seen. The backgrounds became blue skies. The real blue spatial space. Seen not tangible just like his freedom.
But with Arrow boy the ethereal experience became Iconic. I had finished both canvases. Then on September the 10th I think, Arrow boy was ground culled with another 11 brumbies, totalling to 17 dead as the expecting mares spontaneously aborted their unborn foals from shock).
Arrow Boy was no longer amongst the green grass. The amiss feeling I had. His painting will never be for sale.
Using traditional methods of painting takes time. Observation is needed as each brumby coat is unique. I use restricted palettes and create hues, so they are unique on each sitting. I keep a strip of canvas with my palette colours of each painting, for each session. While painting, there is observation, but the dialogue is purely ethereal. I get into a trance. It’s the only way I can describe this.
I always listen to music, many genres, but mainly Larna Del Ray. I listen to her only while painting. Or classical music. I do about 4 to 6 hrs sittings, from 6 to 30 sittings, depending on the painting. Spirit is still my longest. The sitting times, depends on the day if I can keep concentrating as I just get into a trance. Honestly, I look and think. I’m like not there, I’m elsewhere.
The brumbies of Kosciuszko National Park exist in a paradoxical space, both revered as part of Australia’s cultural history and simultaneously targeted for eradication. How does your art navigate this duality, and what strategies do you employ to hold together the beauty, fragility, and precariousness of their existence without reducing them to symbols of conflict?
The best way to describe the duality is the painting ‘The grey divide’ my first painting as it is more the symbol of conflict. As mentioned prior, I changed the discourse with Spirit. I made it ‘personal’ showing the ‘individual’. He is a real brumby with a name, a story and a family. He is not a symbol he is real. I depict the everyday life in my paintings. His lived conflict is real. His experience is real, and yet he is such a gentle soul, he keeps the fragility. There is no duality, that is the myth that the Australian government placed on them. This paradox is man created. Animals are meant to be in nature. They are not invasive, we are. In explanation, the brumby is fragile, beautiful and exists, the human condition creates the duality of his invasiveness, the brumby is doing nothing but being a brumby, he did nothing, we are doing this to them, that’s the duality.
Picasso’s Garnica, is said, that a German officer during the occupation of Paris, when he saw a photograph of the painting Garnica and asked Picasso, "Did you do that?" Picasso replied, "No, you did". Garnica is thus symbolic. Therefore, History is very important. To know where you are going, you must look at where you have been. Horses shapes our citadels. Walers have become ‘extinct’ because of WW2. Brumbies have waler blood in their DNA and other rare blood breeds. Like the Waler and Australian stock horse I SEE them as a breed, born free, evolved from and through our history. This is not just about the ‘silver brumby’ or ‘the man from snowy river’, this is to give voice to the sentient in need.
Portraiture in human history is not fragile. The sentient depicted is the fragility, that makes the portrait fragile or strong. Hence Spirit internalised my strategy on how I could balance the art and politics, through art only. For art is the voice of our inspirations. Of our everyday life. Unlike Picasso’ Garnica that it became a symbolic view of carnage, I wanted to depict the everyday life of the brumby to relate the sentient, not the conflict. The conflict is ours- but theirs lived. I am drawing the line between the two. Why realism is used too, as I want you to see him as he really is. Sentient. Real. Not a myth, not a symbol. He exists now.
Your relationship with photographers, rehomers, and the brumbies themselves is not only collaborative but also relational, almost ethnographic in its attentiveness. How has this process of entering into their world, meeting them at Clearview, following their stories, knowing their names, reshaped your own sense of artistic authorship? Do you see yourself more as a translator, witness, or co-narrator?
With ‘authorship’, I would say all, a translator for the brumbies, a witness, and a co-narrator of the journey. My connection is always ethereal. It became a collaborative experience. It is a fine line I have drawn but I had no choice. I am a city dweller. Theirs is tangible mine is not. My first taste of a farm was at Clearview. I never saw a brumby before then.
I had to if I was to continue my journey, as this was a travelled experience. At the start of my practise, I didn’t say ‘I want to be a brumby painter’, it just evolved. By the time I visited Clearview, more than a year had passed already from my first connection. I had meant to visit KNP but then covid happened and now I can’t go as my pooch, Matisse’ is too old. 16 now, I can’t leave him alone or take him with me like I did prior. My KNP visit will have to wait for now.
Moreen & Paul have saved over 500 brumbies to date. Their experience is all tangible, they are primary rehomers and approved & registered with Parks for rehoming. All on their own expense. But they can’t do it alone. They work with volunteers, offering a camping site, in return visitors clean up pen yards and other. My volunteering is IT monitoring, graphics, and fundraisers. In return, Moreen gives me the daily events of the brumbies and all the photos I want or ask for like for Spirit. I needed his head proportions, so I was sent a photo with a pen next to his face from Paul. They support my journey wholeheartedly because it is to voice the brumbies.
Moreen, Karen Ferguson, Karen Gates and I use our voice each in our own way. Karen Gates is Clearview’s volunteer trainer. Each play a role. Karen Ferguson is a wildlife brumby photographer, she relates through her lenses, and her art is therapy based. Different to my approach. Karen has given me permission to use all I want but still ask each time I would use one even if I have approval for all. Other photographers have helped me, like Paul McIver I have his references too, and he also advices me on the political navigation on the public forum. They are my main two photographers that have helped my journey and concrete it, to give voice through my art.
The references I use are many, and although I may use one reference picture, I look at many different pictures of the same brumby and told stories and connect the thread to my painting to create the sentient and capture his spirit. Each is a whole process and transformation that especially in Portraiture it translates to something entirely different.
Simply put, I take full authorship on my paintings created because of portraiture and each individual brumby. His life, his voice, my hand.
In your expanded statement, you invoke theories of freedom, labels, speciesism, and hierarchy. How do these philosophical frameworks concretely enter your compositions? For example, do you consciously translate such ideas into gestures of paint, atmosphere, and gaze, or do they operate as an invisible scaffolding that supports the resonance of each portrait?
The theories invoked of freedom, labels, speciesism and Hierarchy, are all ‘on the canvas’ or in the title. In a previous question I related freedom for example, the blue sky in Spirit’s painting is the setting for ‘freedom’. Therefore, ‘freedom’ is in the composition and on the title narrating the philosophical “Under blue skies & ethereal freedom’ blue sky relates the seen/unseen. The composition of him without the KNP background, out of his environment, grounded him seen/unseen free/not free.
The gaze creates my ‘Hierarchy’. When not used it relays family, so they are doing something. Like the painting ‘Where the sky is blue & the earth is gold’ Like Playing/ kissing/ eating/running. The stallion portraits all have the gaze, purposely, relating the hierarchy. He is the leader of the mob, sometimes stands alone, away, looking out for his family or a bachelor, looking to create a family, or challenging you, he stares at you purposely so you ‘have to look’ or look away.
Funny story regarding ‘the gaze’. When at Equitana exhibiting, I had the Friesian group come to me telling me that while their Friesian stallion was in the Arena, every time he got to the same corner, he would get unsettled. They realised that he was looking at my painting of Irish, that was hanging on my exhibition wall, in the distance. He thought that Irish was a real horse, ‘gazing’ at him. The best compliment I ever got. A horse viewing my painting as a real brumby through his gaze. I take his word for it.
Colour palettes create the moods and settings in part. Depends on the painting. Sometimes gestural, as for the snow on Irish. Imagined and added as the ethereal told me something was missing. The settings are shown when 2 as a family, mainly foals, and ground shadows ‘play’ again for mood and settings if shown.
The labels are the political stands of Government laws labelling them; Invasive species, feral horses, or non-native and others also say not a ‘breed’ a type or not wild if rehomed. Again, a human condition to give labels. Thus, an unseen scaffolding but for my drawings I use ‘dandelions’ in each title. Dandelion is an ‘invasive weed’ in Australia, that is not native, labelled invasive, but is everywhere, and very difficult to eradicate. I made this analogy of the brumby to the dandelion, as the herb itself is medicinal. So, the dandelion used as the symbol or title, to say ethereally ‘I will never be eradicated, my spirit lives’. As previously said, I voice the brumby not the condition put on them.
Speciesism, attaches the research of philosopher Singer on animal rights, as previously mentioned, it references ‘the sentient of his own species’. Hence Portraiture is always at the forefront, a brumby, ‘a sentient species’, not human but portraited as per the impact of portraiture. Speciesism is not an invisible scaffolding but is ‘unseen’ if you still ‘see’ with your experienced human conditions and not expand your imagination of what is there. A living sentient.
To elaborate, some people see the horse as a commodity, even though they love them, it is a condition unseen. Their own ‘self-preservation’ of ‘being human’ sometimes seems to touch people when you say they are sentient and relate them in human analogies, hence it seems to confuse the listener as they see it Anthropomorphic. It’s up to the viewer to see or not see, their choice.
I think like an artist, hence my communication is different. Speciesism relates the sentient in them. The two are tied. Using Portraiture, that is based on seeing the human through history of portraiture as explained previously, was the answer. I show them as their species, but in a human connotation (portraiture) to say; See the sentient.
You have spoken of the incandescent, this single ray of light, as a guiding metaphor in your practice. How does this motif of light, both literally in your canvases and symbolically in your thinking, function as a counterweight to the darker realities of culling, displacement, and environmental mismanagement?
The dark realities are counterweighted by the ‘light’ both internally felt and on canvas. When I first started on this journey, on my very first conversations with Moreen, she told me something I found profound. ‘This fight has been long going between Government and the brumbies’ she said, then explained why rehoming, why they had to stay wild why to save them, why some intact and what we could strive to change. Then she said, ‘Understand we can’t save them all. But that one saved is one safe.’ This was in November 2020. That stayed with me.
From then to now it got worse. (First ground culling now aerial culling reintroduced). When I found out that Arrow Boy was Ground culled (back in September 2022). I was distraught. Hence my poem ‘A brumby called Arrow boy.’ Emerged to alleviate the pain. It has not been easy. But as my experiences are too, Christian based conditions that I personally accepted as part of myself, I use hope and keep faith as an internal dialogue.
Since 2020, Clearview Brumby Rescue have saved over 500 brumbies to date as said. That’s the faith & hope. We have some intact for future rewilding, we have their DNA. We have their story. Individually. I was able to be part of that process, thorough our friendship of mutual love of these sentient animals and create art at the same time. We keep each other motivated.
Therefore, the single ray of light translates on my canvases through the brumby painted that is safe. If I were to paint the pain, then it would be like Picasso’s ‘Garnica’. Maybe when I visit KNP that will happen. A different type of painting. Thus, I think of the wild brumby, the individual, the one saved. Not the situation. The individual brumby painted is the incandescent ray of light on my canvas.
The brumbies are often dismissed by bureaucratic language as feral or pests. In your work, you reframe them as subjects of dignity, complexity, and lineage. How important is it to you that viewers recognize the individuality of each brumby, and what strategies of storytelling, titling, or narrative layering do you employ to resist the flattening of their identities?
Feral, pests- their labels; These are conditions used to justify laws of culling and knackeries. Blame is focused on the brumbies as they are not native and blamed for ‘destroying’ the environment. Ironically, KNP has ski resorts, a hydro built for electrical power, (flattening parts of the park), camping parks for families and roads. Then when aerial culling the brumbies, they close the park and leave the carcasses to rot. Not logical not ethical. But law. But I guess I already answered how I reframe them to dignity complexity and lineage. But I will add it is Paramount that each brumby has the dignity they deserve, the sentient complexity seen and their lineage preserve. It’s to change the discourse, highlighting the brumby not the conditions put on them. Painting their portrait gives them voice. Up to the viewer what they see.
To explain, If, they were labelled as post native for example, and laws protecting them with no culling but other ethical means of management like rehoming and or wild fertility controls in place. The discourse would change, so would peoples viewed conditions through the different ideal becoming the new propaganda.
I see art as ‘free speech’ and with it I can ‘label’ how I see them, objectively. In their true form, not one that is a propaganda or a condition of society. A real individual brumby that has dignity, complexity, and lineage, a brumby a sentient that is going through his own ‘genocide’ only because of these labels and laws. My paintings give them a real portrayal of whom they are, not based on propaganda, anthropomorphism, or other, an individual a brumby, that portraits his everyday life through paint.
The laws of the government don’t apply to my art. With art I show you the truth. If you see it or not, it’s there. Spirit, Shadow, Irish, Arrow Boy, Sunshine, Zeus, Ginger, Elle, and many more individual brumbies are there, real, living their everyday life. Safe if rehomed, unsafe because of laws if left on the grounds of KNP. Free but not free. You can’t flatten the reality of a real living sentient of his species being persecuted. Eradication equals genocide. Different words same meaning for different sentient species. That is my felt unspoken narrative.
I have outlined the strategies in the previous answers of how I see the subjects. I do also through poetry like the poem’ not of country’. and other short discourses. It is important that the viewer understands but I am not to persuade as said, and certainly they are to see as they see. Each viewer is an individual. Each will see differently. It’s up to them; I can only hope and keep faith that they too see the truth.
You have created a manifesto for the brumbies and attached histories, genealogies, and stories to your works, extending painting into a form of living archive. How do you view the role of the archive, both visual and textual, in contemporary art as a space where advocacy and aesthetics can coexist without collapsing into pure documentation?
The future will answer that. It depends on what may change, if the laws eventually change and rewilding is introduced, they will then be paramount as documentation and have archival significance. Clearview keeps records and microchips each brumby. DNA tests, boomerang laws to forever rehomers that have taken brumbies from them and so on. This is documentation of course. Very import as archive.
When I attach their stories like I do to my art, it becomes different, more personal, you get to know HIS or HER or their story. Like a biographical account more than a documentation. I would call it biographical rather than documentational or archival. I’m not ‘observing’ them for a study or keeping records of their lineage myself. I’m relaying to you ‘their life Story, their lineage and their history’, biographically. Where they came from, who they were, where they are now and above all each individually who they are. Their moment in time, of their own existence.
Thus, each a biography of a sentient of his species. Besides, the painted portraits empowers the biography, it is itself a ‘documentation’ that cannot be flattened or collapse. It holds its ground firmly.
Your practice makes us reconsider the larger question of what art is for. Beyond commodity, beyond politics, you suggest that art has the power to dignify, to give voice, and to expand awareness. How has this journey, from childhood fascination with horses to the intricate portraits of rehomed brumbies, reshaped your own belief in art’s role in society today?
In the contemporary world of art, we are given many discourses regarding art and what art is or ‘should be’ but sometimes it feels like institutions are trying to dictate a ‘movement’ on what it should be. Art evolved through art created by artists in their time, changing the discourse of what art was of ‘their time’. So, the idea of the larger question of what art is for or was is only given to us by the history once it has happened and passed.
I always loved to draw. I also, always loved animals, especially horses. This deepened by the age of ten and for 2 years I only drew horses. I saw them majestical, beautiful, powerful and intelligent creatures with the thirst for freedom. Shaped by books and movies. I loved cowboy movies, always horses there. I wanted to ride too. I finally did get to ride once only, a horse named Pepper, in my early twenties. The experience left me questioning why we want to ride them. I felt sorry for Pepper thinking how he had to have many on his back, not free and with only some care from the handlers. The mouth bit’ got me too. I remembered reading the book ‘black beauty as a child. It opened a different way of seeing things. ‘Put yourself in their shoes’. This shaped my thoughts and feelings and to rethink horseracing too. I thus felt sorry for Pepper and never rode again.
I took up painting late, following a life dream. I have learned skills at university to channel my ‘thinking’. But my natural self has a thread attached to art, my heart. I always felt it had to mean something, and I feel it. It is a feeling not a thought per se. Leonardo Da Vinci put it well. ‘When the heart does not work with the hand, there is not art’. Thus, it is not a belief; it is what I feel. I am passionate about brumbies, so I paint them so you can see who they are, sentient species. It’s their own voice. So, the answer may be, the brumbies everyday life is reshaping what art is for and, art is ‘their’ voice through my hand, and the narrative put on them by today’s societal conditions is providing this ‘reshaping’ of art.
That is what makes art powerful. History tells us it is. Or history is not true either? Yes subjective, but still objective too. Our world has been shaped through art and its history. Through and by artists passions, not just through meticulous thinking and planning like an architect. It evolved through them and because of them.
Art has always shown the everyday life. I paint sentient portraits. Therefore, if this practice, that evolved through my own life experiences does make you reconsider your view of art, then I am but an instrument being played by a fine musician, and if it reshapes art, that may be up to you, the viewer, or time itself.
I can only say I feel my art, that is my only ‘belief’ of what art is or should be for me.