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Thursday, 20 December 2012

Australian Aboriginal art.

One of my absolute favourite art styles is Australian Aboriginal art.

I love the natural earthy colours and the simple patterns that are used. I love the fact that these are traditional works, and each one is symbolic and tells a story.
Despite the fact the art is based on styles done for thousands of years the work looks contemporary, and fits perfectly in to a modern room.  However,  traditionally it was not done in acrylic paints on wooden board, as it is now, though!!

Here are a few of my favourite paintings, that I saw during my visit to Australia. Most are from galleries in Alice Springs.

I think I visited just about every gallery in Alice Springs....and there are rather a lot of them!!



A wonderful selection of beautiful ( but expensive! ) paintings.



This is one I would love to hang in my living room. I am tempted to do a similar version, and could produce something very similar to this. However, I would prefer to have an authentic painting from the outback rather than something I copied, even if it looked virtually the same!



I think these 3 paintings are really trying to fit a modern market. I doubt that originally the artists would do 3 paintings that coordinated like this! Despite that, they are very dramatic, and very large works, which would need a huge wallspace to do them justice.



Blue is not a colour that aboriginals used before they started working in acrylics. Some purists feel  only the natural earth colours (based on rocks, seeds, sand, berries and ashes etc ) have a place in the work. I disagree , as all art changes with time, and they have a right to expand their style. This work mixes blue with the natural terracotta and neutrals. It is a very strong painting which you are really drawn to. Each section is made from tiny dots painted with a stick.



This photo was taken in Darwin. The lady was working on a very long painting which had a lovely mixture of pattern and reptiles. There is so much detail in it, and the colours are very bright due to using a lot of yellow. 


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