Aboriginal Icons

The Aboriginal conviction that art is the way for understanding and remembering the time of the mystical Ancestors, for simultaneously maintaining and bringing the connection into the present and of ensuring its continuation into the future, has led to a complex visual vocabulary that bypasses a liner concept of time and space. Already interested in icons as shorthand references to deep-seated beliefs, I found the Aboriginal disregard for depicting the literal world especially compelling. The Aborigine’s sense of connectedness to the landscape and the spirit of places and to the full expanse of shared history frees him to make art about the most compelling aspects of being alive—the parts best expressed through iconography and the language of archetypes, the parts which speak to the soul.

As I worked on 12 x 12 inch wooden boxes, drawing on the traditional Aboriginal palette and use of two dimensional space, simple direct imagery developed from the earth tones. Ignoring the usual confines of the picture plane, the paintings spread over the side of the boxes into undefined space.