Milton Jackson, Noongar artist, was born in 1933 in Talyerup, which is near Gnowagnerup in the south-west of Western Australia. When he was seven years old, Jackson was taken to the Carrolup Native Settlement, where he stayed until he was fourteen. Jackson was at Carrolup when the school came under the management of teacher Noel White and his wife Lily, who brought a liberal style of teaching and care to what had been a severe and disciplinarian institution. Noel White encouraged many of the children to paint and draw their surroundings. As Jackson stated in the documentary film Show us a light: the art of Carrolup (1991): “He’d take us out and tell us to paint that tree exactly how it was”. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the famed works of the Carrolup children were toured in exhibitions in Australia, New Zealand and Europe and collected widely. Jackson created dusky pastel works that often contain kangaroos journeying across the landscape. In a 2006 ABC Message Sticks Program, an elderly Jackson described what it was like: “When we were doing painting in the mission, we used to have a race to see who did the best painting. And we used to say to one another, 'Don’t you look at my painting, and don’t you do the same painting as I do’... When it was finished we used to put them side-by-side and work it out from there. 'My trees are better than your trees.’ Or 'My colours are better than yours.’ We used to have a competition there and it was tops.” While he was at Carrolup, Jackson was also responsible for breadmaking.
Jackson’s childhood works were included in the 1992 exhibition 'Nyungar Landscapes’, which began a national tour at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia, and 'Koorah Coolingah (Children Long Ago)’ (2006) which was shown at the Katanning Arts Centre, Katanning, Western Australia & Western Australian Museum, Perth, Western Australia. In 1991, when Show us a light: the art of Carrolup was produced, Jackson was known as the local artist in Wagin, and continued to work in the style of the Carrolup school, selling his paintings to a wide range of people.
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- Writers:
- Fisher, Laura
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2011
