Emily Kame Kngwarreye

When we were looking into researching our AW20 Eclipse collection, Chloe pointed me in the direction of the most fabulous Emily Kame Kngwarrye, an Aboriginal Australian artist from the Utopia community in the Northern Territory. Kngwarrye was perhaps Australia’s most important and prolific artist, although she only painted onto canvas for the last eight years of her life.

She drew on her experience of working with batik and was inspired by her enormous connection to her surroundings, the native desert community. Often her starting point would be mapping, viewing the land from above to which she would apply many dots or tracks in mesmerising glorious colours.

It was Kngwarrye magnificent use of colour and such bold layering of paint that first drew me in, but as one keeps looking you get an immense appreciation of her vibrant world. One’s impression is that each canvas has captured a small piece of her unique environment, you feel the animal tracks, the changing seasons, the local flora and fauna. There are some lovely photographs of her painting, making instinctive marks capturing a moment and the natural energy all around her. She would lay her canvas on the floor and paint standing directly above or sit/crouch next to her canvas often using two brushes at a time, in a totally fearless manner.

Writing this journal piece has encouraged me to look back at her paintings and once again I realise how much I am moved by them.

- Heti Gervis