Born in 1958 in Yallourn in the Gippsland region of Victoria, Skye Crowe (also known as Alkira) is a descendant of the Parperloihener people of Tasmania. Her Aboriginal heritage was denied her until 2005 and it was only after learning of her family history that she began to paint. Painting in oils, synthetic polymer and ink on canvas, Crowe depicts the historical stories of the harsh treatment that her people received in Tasmania. In correspondence with the author in August 2008, Crowe said that her art also “depicts how I feel today about being Aboriginal”.
Crowe has spent most of her life living in Shepparton, Victoria, though periodically living for brief periods in Queensland, the Northern Territory and New South Wales. After learning of her identity Crowe enrolled in a basic cultural arts course at the Goulburn Ovens Institute of
TAFE (Shepparton) in 2006, but describes herself as “mostly self-taught, picking up little bits of information from my Elders in Tasmania”.
The
TAFE course provided Crowe with several visual ideas, one of which was not to utilise too many colours in a single image; but this is not something that Crowe always follows as she enjoys working with a lot of blue hues and many bright colours, feeling that they add more depth to the narrative of the stories she paints. Three of her works (two paintings and one black and white photograph) were selected for entry into the 2006 Victorian Indigenous Art Awards and exhibited at Maloney’s Gallery in Melbourne in October that same year. These works were
Destruction of my People, Tortured Family Tree and
My Lost Son.
In the short time since Crowe has taken up art she has diversified her talents and also works as a woodburner and emu egg carver. Her works are represented in the Aboriginal Community Strategic Planning and Policy Unit in Shepparton, where her paintings and postcard representations of her work are sold to visitors to the Unit. Her work has also been sold to private collectors, both in Australia and the United States of America.
In 2008 Crowe was still living in Shepparton, working part-time as an artist using mainly acrylic paints and occasionally acrylic inks.
- Writers:
- Allas, TessNote:
- Date written:
- 2008
- Last updated:
- 2011
- Status:
- peer-reviewed
