Australian Aboriginal Artists

7 piece(s) in the gallery

Although Aboriginal art compositions vary, the works displayed are more "modern" in nature due to more minimal design elements such as circles, spirals, straight lines, and zip-zags being utilized. More traditional Aboriginal forms include: Dot-Painting and X-Ray Art. X-Ray Art can contain animal and/or human skeletal elements.

Ancestral spirits are at the epicenter of the "Dreaming Tales" depicted in a number of our paintings. These spirits took "actions" which set specific "earthly-related" processes into motion that both shaped the current landscape and items related to it.

The "DREAMING" lore as it applies to Evelyn Pultara's "Bush Yam":
"This is about Yam Dreaming. It's really important food for us. Big story." Evelyn relates that after that old lady passed away (and she is referring to the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye - her aunt) there was no one left to paint that story about the Bush Yam so that's why she took it up.

And to Elizabeth Marks Nakamarra's "Lightning Strikes Dreaming":
This painting is associated with Elizabeth's father's Dreaming. The zig-zag lines depict lightning strikes during storms. The rains that come fill the small creeks. Sandhills (tali), rocks (puli), and Bush Potato also feature in the story. This story is associated with the Water Dreaming site at Kalipinpa. Elizabeth is considered to be one of the fifty most collectible artists of 2004 by "Australian Art Collector".

As profiled by Marie Geissler in "Craft Arts International", issue #66, 2006, Barbara Weir's "Grass" paintings typically use a linear technique. Narratives generally refer to the grass seed that is part of the "bush tucker" found in the region. The seeds are gathered and crushed to make flour, and used to bake bread. With these paintings she combines both aerial and side-on views to describe dense fields of swaying grass in close focus. The result is both diaphanous and mysterious as exquisite linear layers of finely painted filaments seem at once to be appearing and disappearing. The effect is of pulsating rhythms which are further accentuated by soft plays of flowing color that weave gently into and over the canvas surface.

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