Contemporary Australia: Women

139 Mimpi 2010 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas 120 x 180cm Opposite Warla 2008 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas 119 x 120.2cm connected the artist with Tapu, her birth place, and her spiritual being, both vital to her inner life and her art. Sandhills and living water continue to be key themes for Wakartu’s works in ‘Contemporary Australia: Women’. 8 Wakartu also painted about sites where large numbers gather at law time — the body patterning and the vibratory power of ceremonial activity. These are represented with powerful aesthetic economy in masterful broad sweeps of colour, applied with the immediacy of ‘fingers shifting pigments across skin’. 8 Wakartu describes her process: I paint from here [head — thinking about country] and here [breasts, collarbone and shoulder blades — a reference to body painting] . . . When I paint I am thinking about law from a long time ago. 9 Wakartu Cory Surprise is regarded as a ‘painter’s painter’ of immense artistic conviction and eloquence. She used colour instinctively, joyously — yellows and fiery reds, purples, black and even acid green in exciting colour and tonal shifts. Contrasts in paint quality from opaque to translucent soften her austere compositions. A ‘finished’ painting would be reworked — even obliterated — as she brushed and scrubbed the paint or mixed it directly onto the canvas until the effect synched with her memory of the landscape. Wakartu leaves a rich artistic legacy. She was prolific, but a very considered and discerning artist who painted with integrity, imagination and empathy. Her works welled out of the deep, calm confidence of understanding her place and the force of her spirit. The spirit will live on back in the sandhills in the Great Sandy Desert and the living waterholes that she sang and called to in life. Diane Moon Wakartu Cory Surprise