Bush Trip

I've been over 20 years now in the art industry. We started off pretty small but I think that now we are quite large. We situated in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory of Australia and we have a very large Aboriginal Art gallery.

But I think that a blog is anything but chronological so we're not going to start off in chronological order. We'll just start off with today.

It is 9:30pm and I'm 50km north of Alice Springs, heading back home into A/S. I'm in my car and talking into my tape recorder. I was up at 6am to do a trip to Utopia which is NE of Alice Springs. It is a 600km trip where I stop off at many, many outstations and I collect art and I drop off canvas and paints. And I talk to artists, I photograph artists and then I move to another outstation and repeat the process.

Today, fortunately the weather was pretty good. I would think in the mid 30's and that is good for March. It was a little overcast for the first two thirds of the day and then it cleared up. My first stop was 180km NE of Alice Springs at an outstation called Mulga Bore and my old friend of twenty years, Lindsay Bird was there and we had a great chat and in fact I did some videoing of him too, with his permission of course, and it was just muck around video and we had some laughs over it. He didn't have any canvas ready because he has been involved in initiation. He told me that two young boys have now graduated and are now 'men' in the tribes eyes and there is another two fellas in the bush being initiated at the moment.

There were a few ladies there too that brought in art. It was all good. I don't think that there was anything outstanding but it was very good. It was all affordable art and they enjoy doing. Peggy Purvis, Annie Mbitjana (she does mainly little 1'x1' paintings with white paint designs on black background), June Bird, Anna Tilmouth. They were all really nice and I was really happy with all the paintings.

So I stayed there about two hours and I did a lot of chatting. I wasn't in a hurry. Sometimes I'm in a hurry to get through the whole day because I know how long of a day it is. And from there I went to a place called Camel Camp where most of the artists speak little or no English. When I got there, there was Kathleen Ngale (who is a fairly high profile artist), Angeline Pwerle (who is a high profile artist), Gladys Kemarre, Elizabeth Petyarre, and there was a spokeswoman there named Pansy McLeod who really doesn't speak very good English either, but she was the best of the interpretors. I actually received some very bad news while I was there with being informed that Ally Kemarre had passed away last week. Ally was a very close sister to Gladys. Gladys was there when Pansy told me and you could see the sorrow in her eyes and I also felt very, very sad and I did pass on my condolences with sincerity. But apart from that, these people mourn in their own way. They have ways to mourn like we do and today I was Tim Jennings from Mbantua Gallery out there to deliver new canvas and paints, and to pay and purchase and collect paintings that they had done. So they were around that and they were even quite humorous at times. And although I didn't collect a lot today because I haven't been there for a few weeks and they had already brought some into town previously, I did give out a fair bit of canvas. And I asked if I could video them as a group and talk to them with a video and it was fun and 'yes' they all wanted to do it. When I first brought the camera out, Elizabeth was sitting to the far left, and then all of a sudden she was right in the middle because she really wanted to be apart of it. So that was really nice. So they all had a bit of a chat on the video and I guess that I was there for probably an hour and a half so too before I moved on.

I then went on to Tomahawk Camp where they do a lot of fine art work and I'm really encouraging a lot of fine dot work or 'pointolism' and some hadn't finished their work with the canvas that I had given out three weeks ago but some had, most of them were small canvas. I was particularly impressed with Maureen Dixon's work. They were only 3'x1' canvas' but they were very, very good pieces of work. And Dianne Dixon's weren't far behind. Generally speaking, they are a great bunch of women there, mostly women that do the paintings, and, again, I enjoyed myself there. Suson Purvis, she was basically the spokesperson and Lorna Purvis, she doesn't say much, she is Suson's mum, and she's also the mum of Angela Purvis who have employed at the gallery and who is now living in Alice Springs. We put her on as a sales person, as an information person, and she is a really good young lass as well. When I say young, she's probably in her early thirties but pretty switched on and tries hard.

So from Tomahawk I went to Boundary Bore. There I saw Greeny Purvis and his wife Kathleen, Judy Purvis and Patsy Long. And there was a couple of other people there too. Katrina Greeny was there as well. That was pretty much it. But I stayed again. I stayed about 1.5-2hrs and I jsut wanted to chat a lot. They had some nice paintings ready. Greeny had a nice 4'x4' which I gave him about five weeks ago so it has taken him a while to do. Kathleen had some paintings, Judy did too, Patsy had some, and I gave out more canvas there. And again, I asked them if I could video them (because I do't normally do a lot of videoing) and they were pretty happy about that. So we had lots of laughs and it was good fun and we chatted about all sorts of things like hunting and bush foods and how things are going with them. Where Maureen is? Maureen is one of Greeny and Kathleen's daughters and she married recently and she's over in Ti Tree in her husbands country (probably 150km away but still in the Anmatyerre country).

From there I went to what is now called Rocket Tank Camp. And there I became really busy and I had about twenty artists come over with lots of work and I was pretty impressed with a lot of their work. They've been painting with us for twenty years now and we've always encouraged lots of them. Janelle Stockman started off on just tiny little baby canvas and has now progressed to some pretty big ones. And she only paints for us. We do have an agreement. She is one of the few artists that we do have a signed agreement with that we work together and that is it. And she doesn't work for anyone else, and we really look after her. And it works really well because we encourage her and we talk, and she's a really good listener too, and she wants to learn, although she is the artist and she really has lots of talent. But sometimes she will bring a painting over that looks a little flat and I will just let her know that I think that is looks a little flat and that it needs something to make it come alive and she is all ears, and she may make some suggestions that sound good and I tell her that she is the artist and to do it if she thinks it will work, so she does. She has a terrific talent and she's a good girl too. She's a mother of five and she's only in her mid twenties. She's a good mother too and her husband is Paul Morton. And we work really well together and it's been a great partnership actually. Another young lady, around about the same age who we've worked with over the years, probably a bit slower in evolving because she likes to do fine work and that is Kylie Kemarre. She came over today with a paintings that was 6'x5' and it was jsut magnificent. It was white on black and it was just unbelievable. You would have to see it to believe it. So we will stretch it up soon but I don't know if it will go onto the website or not because her work is fine and it usually sells fairly quickly to private people. She doesn't have a high profile because most of her works sells very quickly and we dont have time to really accumulate enough for an exhibition. So we will just see over the years how things go and maybe we can put more away to build up for an exhibition one day.

But look, we had a lot of people out there. Lucky Morton is painting really well, Sarah Morton is painting really well. Audrey Morton has improved out of site. Mary Morton is as keen as mustard and she paints well too. Lily Lion, Michelle Lion (she has some really fine, beautiful paintings) and I think they paint 98% of their paintings with us and I've encouraged them over the years and we've poured in hours and hours of work with them and I think that it is really paying off. And they are so happy too. They come over as groups and they are really excited and I get really excited too by just talking to them and encouraging them. And sometimes I will tell them when I don't think that it has been painted with their heart. You find that you can tell when it's just a money painting because I know it's just quick so I give it back to them to do some more work on it. So i do those sorts of things but I've done that over the years and I think they know me now and they know that I want them to paint well, not jsut from a market side of Mbantua, but for them too, for their own pride. Just like anyone else, they love a pat on the back. Whether you're from an Aboriginal society, from a white society, from an Asian society, who doesn't love a pat on the back. And there's nothing better and I feel great when I look at a painting and I think 'that is just fabulous'. So we do a lot of that.

Anyway, I must have been there at least two hours. The sun had jsut gone down when I left and I'm normally half way home by that time but I just got engrossed today with talking, chatting, enjoying my day. And I think that it also helped with the weather not being so hot. Over the summer months of December through February it can be awfully hot with loads upon loads of flies, and it zaps your energy but when it's not so hot it's really good.

And Lucky Morton, she's sort of a leader out there at Rocket Tank Camp and her work is really good so I haven't named everybody but it was a good day, I thoroughly enjoyed it and we do lots of this. We've been doing it for twenty years now and hopefully we'll be doing it for many years to come because it is important for lots of reasons which I can't go into right now because I'm about to come into the town limits and I had better drive properly.

So I will catch you next time.