Aboriginal Art

Aboriginals are some of my favourite people. I have this fascination of tribes and cultures (liking African and Australia tribes quite a bit). I first researched Aboriginal Art in 2007 for an art project, and just fell in love with their art. It isn't just art for them though, it's a way of communicating and telling a story, and that's whats so fascinating about them.

My work: I was inspired by the mainly neutral colours used by the aboriginals for both these pieces (the second being an extension of the first).

I used the colours green and red in my first piece, since they were contrasting colours, and could both be made with nature. I used my fingers, including self in the painting, to create the brown dots in the piece, making one yellow, leaving the message of daring to be different. I framed the work with sticks to try and keep to the natural feeling. Although you can’t see it in the picture, some of the sticks have a squiggly pattern on them (I believe it’s created by a certain type of bug)

My second piece included a bit of influence from Rothko, by changing my yellow dot to a yellow line, splitting the colour distribution to about 90% and 10%. The yellow line is supposed to represent a song line, line of life; and although it doesn’t connect you can see that it continues between each part, but in which ever manner you wish to see it connect. Again, hard to tell from the picture, but this piece (or pieces) are about 2m tall.

Link to some more about symbols: http://www.aboriginal-dreamtime.net2go.info/Aboriginal/Aboriginal_Symbole.htm