Diawun, 1997

natural earth pigments on canvas

90.5 x 120 cm

Price on application — enquire

Provenance: Warmun Traditional Artists, Warmun, WA, Cat No. HC0038 Kimberley Art Gallery, Vic, Cat No. KAHC0038/97 Lawson Menzies, Aboriginal Fine Art, Sydney, 2005, Lot 19 Private Collection NSW
Artwork story: Hector began painting in the late 1980s, and at the time he created this work, he was the oldest member of the Warmun artists, at Turkey Creek. Though his family history was littered with harrowing tales of persecution, he became an inspiration and delight to anyone who found the time to just sit and enjoy his company and humour. He would build the surface of his canvass slowly and carefully by applying soft earth colours, pink, greens, greys and later introducing warm yellow, reds, cream, and blacks. He gained renown for quirky figurative depictions and irregular hill formations rendered with an innate sense of spacial geometry. Hector treated the surface of his work as if it were sacred, touching and rubbing his hand gently across it reverently. Watching him use a stone to rub, sand and smooth the thin washes of softly coloured earth pigment that had been mixed from rocks gathered and carefully ground in the surrounding environment, made one feel as if he believed the painting to be the country itself.

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c.1929 – 2006

natural earth pigments on canvas

90.5 x 120 cm

Price on application — enquire

Provenance: Warmun Traditional Artists, Warmun, WA, Cat No. HC0038 Kimberley Art Gallery, Vic, Cat No. KAHC0038/97 Lawson Menzies, Aboriginal Fine Art, Sydney, 2005, Lot 19 Private Collection NSW
Artwork story: Hector began painting in the late 1980s, and at the time he created this work, he was the oldest member of the Warmun artists, at Turkey Creek. Though his family history was littered with harrowing tales of persecution, he became an inspiration and delight to anyone who found the time to just sit and enjoy his company and humour. He would build the surface of his canvass slowly and carefully by applying soft earth colours, pink, greens, greys and later introducing warm yellow, reds, cream, and blacks. He gained renown for quirky figurative depictions and irregular hill formations rendered with an innate sense of spacial geometry. Hector treated the surface of his work as if it were sacred, touching and rubbing his hand gently across it reverently. Watching him use a stone to rub, sand and smooth the thin washes of softly coloured earth pigment that had been mixed from rocks gathered and carefully ground in the surrounding environment, made one feel as if he believed the painting to be the country itself.