Debbie Hempstead-Callaghan, painter, ceramicist, weaver, screenprinter and muralist was born on the 11th December 1958 in Goondiwindi, Queensland. She left Queensland in 1974 and lived in Sydney until 1986, when she moved to Wollongong. Debbie did not take up art until 1997 when she was encouraged by her friend, Mark Timbery, to enrol in the Aboriginal Art and Culture course at West Wollongong TAFE. It is through this course, Hemstead-Callaghan states, that she has been “brought closer to my culture and spirituality”.
Hempstead-Callaghan paints in a landscape style on both canvas and wood and was a semi-finalist in TAFE’s annual Art and Design Award in 2003. She regularly participates in the annual NAIDOC exhibition at Wollongong Courthouse and in 2004 she exhibited her prints in the “Red Hand in Wollongong” exhibition at the Long Gallery, University of Wollongong. This exhibition was in association with Franck Gohier of Redhand Graphics. Hempstead-Callaghan graduated with an Advanced Diploma in Visual Arts from West Wollongong TAFE in August 2006.
That same year Hemstead-Callaghan took part in “Looking Through European Eyes”, an exhibition curated by and shown at the Wollongong City Gallery. She was also a finalist in the Parliament of NSW Indigenous Art Prize in 2006 and has worked on a number of murals in her local area including one about drug and alcohol at the Bellambi Community Centre, another for the Department of Housing in Bellambi and another at Bellambi Public School. Of her work, Hemstead-Callaghan says that she likes to “paint on a spiritual level about the land and our ancestors who walked it” and that she hopes to instill in her children the “spiritual connection of the land, the blood and the journey” that her art portrays.
- Writers:
- Allas, Tess
Note:
- Date written:
- 2007
- Last updated:
- 2011
- Status:
- peer-reviewed
