ROVER JOOLAMA THOMAS - CROSS ROADS
ROVER JOOLAMA THOMAS
CROSS ROADS, 1995
91.5 x 122 cm
natural earth pigments on canvas
REGION
Warmun, WA
PROVENANCE
Neil McLeod Fine Art, Vic
Fireworks Gallery, Qld, Cat No. FW4727
Private Collection, Qld
Private Collection, NSW
Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Fireworks Gallery
Signed verso
STORY
Rover Thomas lived a traditional bush life with his family at Well 33 until he moved, at 10 years of age, with his family to Billiluna Station, where he was initiated, after his mother's death. After working for a period as a jackeroo on the Canning Stock Route he became a fencing contractor in Wyndham and later worked as a stockman in the Northern Territory and the fringes of the Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts. In his later years, he settled and began painting in the Warmun community at Turkey Creek.
While Rover's artworks can generally be characterised as map-like depictions of country executed with natural earth pigments in a graphic Kimberley style, they generally carry historic and social connotations. In this emblematic work the black line does symbolise a bitumen road, however the line in chocolate brown ochre is the unbroken ancestral path representing the continuity of Kimberley culture though this country. The canvas is divided by these ‘tracks’ into four blocks, black and white symbolising the inhabitants, and yellow ochre unifying them and the country itself. The tracery of white dots brings the image of country and culture to life as in ceremony.
Images of roads meeting became an enduring theme throughout Rover’s painting career and can be interpreted as the artist’s belief that both black and white can live reconciled and in harmony.
EXHIBITED
Exhibited:
Fireworks Gallery, Collector Series, 2004, Brisbane, Qld
ARTIST PROFILE
