Ian Waldron was born in 1950 at Atherton in rural Far North Queensland. Waldron’s traditional country and language group is Kurtjar. Kurtjar country is in the Gulf of Carpentaria, spanning the coast from the mouth of the Staaten River south to Karumba, running over 200 kilometers inland. Ian spent most of his childhood in North Queensland, completing his secondary education in Sydney after a family relocation, returning to Queensland in his mid-teens.
At the age of 16, having studied ticket-writing books, Waldron created his first proper job by showing the owner of Jack and Newells supermarket in Mareeba examples of his skills. This ticket-writing position afforded him the opportunity to hone his artistic ability and grew to incorporate printing and window-dressing. Having effectively created his own department within the supermarket at such a young age instilled confidence in his ability to make a living from art related activities early on in life. Waldron made the progression to owning his own sign-writing business, which he operated in Townsville and Mission Beach. While working as a sign-writer, he was also painting seriously and sold a number of works privately.
In 1992, Waldron took a break from his commercial art career to commence a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Northern Territory University (renamed the Charles Darwin University in 2003). In 1995, his final year of study, Waldron was the winner of the Open Painting category in the 12th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. During the next six years his work was shown in a number of notable exhibitions including the Dobell Drawing Prize (1995), Sydney; Alice Prize (1996), Alice Springs; “12th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award Travelling Exhibition” (1996), Darwin, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide; “Sydney Olympic SOCOG Exhibition” (2000), Sydney; and “Transitions – 17 Years of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award” (2001), Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra.
After completing his studies Waldron returned to the Atherton Tablelands and found work teaching art at the Lotus Glenn Correctional Centre and the Mareeba and Cairns TAFE colleges. A number of years teaching with a steady income allowed him to establish a home base and studio, and in the late 1990s he committed himself to full-time painting. As he built a body of work, Waldron began placing it in art galleries in Cairns, Port Douglas and Mission Beach, with work selling to both domestic collectors and tourists. A NEWflames (Campfire group projects and studios) residency and exhibition in Brisbane at the Fire-Works Gallery in 2003 served to raise his profile and present his work to a new audience. Inclusion in the “Spirit and Vision” exhibition at Sammlung Essl, Vienna (2004), the Archibald Prize (2007) and Wynne Prize (2006, 2007, 2008) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award hosted by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (1995-96, 1998-2003, 2006), the Redlands Westpac Art Prize at the Mosman Art Gallery (2007), The Heysen Prize at the Hahndorf Academy (2008), and a number of large public commissions further enhanced his profile in the contemporary art world.
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