HECTOR JANDANY - HOW THE RAINBOW SNAKE DROWNED HECTOR'S GRANDFATHER
HECTOR JANDANY
HOW THE RAINBOW SNAKE DROWNED HECTOR'S GRANDFATHER, 1995
60 x 80 cm
Natural Earth Pigments on Canvas
REGION
Warmun, WA
PROVENANCE
Warringarri Arts, WA, Cat. No AP0656
The Alec O'Halloran & Helen Zimmerman Collection, NSW
Cooee Art Leven, NSW
STORY
This painting shows a spring on Texas Downs Station where the artist's grandfather died many years ago. Hector's grandfather was swimming in the spring when he was grabbed by Goorlabal, the Rainbow Snake, and he drowned.
Rainbow Snakes live in certain waterholes, and it is dangerous to swim in them.
In the painting the spring is the yellow circle near the top, and the large yellow areas are nearby hills. Four waterholes are shown as black circles on either side of the spring.
At the time of his death in 2007, Hector Jandany was the oldest member of the Warmun artists, at Turkey Creek. His family history was littered with harrowing tales of persecution. Gadiya (white people) shot his grandfather and harmed his grandmother, who subsequently died in childbirth and, while Hector was still in infancy, his father also died in confrontation with white people. Though his mother remarried a stockman, whom Hector admired, it was his mother’s country, the Bungle Bungles (Purnululu), that became the primary source of his artistic inspiration when he took up painting late in his life.
EXHIBITED
Inspired: Collectors Edition, April 2023, Cooee Art | Redfern
ARTIST PROFILE
