Design and Art Australia Online

A Pitjantjatjara speaker who cannot read or write, and speaks only a few words of English, Tommy Yannima Watson was born into a large family at Anamarapiti, a homeland 44km west of the present day community of Irrunytju, sometime around 1935. This was a time in history that also saw the discovery of the successful Aboriginal watercolour landscape painter Albert Namatjira in Australia, and the political rise of failed Austrian watercolourist, Adolf Hitler in Europe.

Aboriginal people have traversed this vernacular terrain around what was a mining camp [nickel from 1970s] at Irrunytju since time immemorial, and so, as a child did Tommy travel in the bush with his parents, though today he is now based more in Alice Springs.

He learnt about hunting and respecting country from his father and with these skills he set out on his own, living like his father taught him. Brought up in such a personal close-knit social environment and now much older he says; “I want to paint these stories so that others can learn and understand about our culture and country”.
A major creation story is that of the 'Two Women’ spiritual entities that travelled across this proscribed stretch of land, shaping and setting in motion the physical, climatic and social structures that are often the themes of his brightly hued paintings. And ironically women have dominated the settlement politically, socially, and in a commercial art sense since a Women’s Centre was established there in the mid 1990s, although electronic media [TV, moving image] was the centre’s first purpose. Like a number of other desert communities [Yuendumu for example], women initially made up the majority of artists working mainly in a form of naive figuration.
Colour field painting developed as a movement in western art history in the 1950s, distinct from American action Abstract Expressionism, with large areas of solid colour referencing the western psychological use of colour and where references to nature and recognisable imagery were reduced or eliminated. Aboriginal men really came to painting on canvas at Irrunytju around 2000-2002 and, in a similar fashion to Yuendumu and Balgo, took to brilliant bright colour fields. Theirs is not of the aforementioned style of western colour field painting though but directly references land, sites, nature, kin and the social. Colours are a culturally referenced thing. Whereas the original Papunya painting school that began this movement was to some degree restricted by cultural stereotype and resultant market reception to earth ochre colours, the 'second generation’ took to the full palette offered by the use of western materials while still retaining the core purity of tradition in the subject matter.
The landscape is visually beautiful but in other climatic terms could be seen as harsh, unforgiving and plain brutal with a cold wind that blows straight through you. In an environment where regular forms of a western season cycle may take years to actually complete their cycle, high 'summer’ temperatures, low rainfall and icy cold 'winter’ winds test common living arrangements right to the present day.

There is a universal Aboriginal statement that when an elder dies a library is lost. In Japanese culture there is a recognition given to some artists called the 'Hokusai Effect’. Based on a famous quote from the great ukiyo-e (genre painting) artist, it claims that these artists only attain real greatness well beyond the normal retirement age for other professions. “Nothing I did before the age of 70 was worthy of attention,” the quote runs, ending with the ambition that, “at 100 and 30, 40 or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive.” There is a further Japanese cultural concept we can’t seem to appreciate or assume here in Australia – a status where an elder artist becomes declared a 'national living treasure’.

Tommy’s art career started late in the 'western desert’ painting movement, which really started in 1971, and late in the sense of his own life, only beginning in his late 60s [Aboriginal male life expectancies remain to this day in the mid 50s]. He was seen to be part of the 'Colour Power’ Aboriginal movement that developed over over the period 1984-2004 [see the 'Colour Power: Aboriginal art post 1984’ exhibition, Ian Potter Centre: NGV, 2004].

Now in his 70s, Tommy’s work was chosen to be re-interpreted into the administration building of the new Musee du Quai Branly Museum in Paris, France in 2006. Seen as one of if not 'the’ major painter of this movement by the market, he has spent the last years settling differences over his use of various agents and payment disputes in what appear positive results. From a quiet softly spoken personality, a kink appears when he paints – he has always painted in bright colours but conceptually and spiritually, meaningfully, they now appear to just get brighter.

Writers:

Mundine, Djon

Date written:

2008

Last updated:

2011