Exhibition Essay:

Kimberley Personified
Recent Paintings by Jack Dale

Jack Dale was born c. 1923 in the Kimberley, the son of a hard-living white frontiersman and an Aboriginal woman, Moddera.  His mother raised him and taught him traditional ways.  He was spared the fate of some mixed-race children, who were, shockingly, killed at birth.  He was also able to avoid being forcibly taken from his mother and ‘educated’ at the institutions set up in those days to separate mixed-race children from their Aboriginal culture.  His father died when he was a small boy.

Jack grew to love the extreme landscape of his birthplac with its steep ranges, small plains and wet-season rivers, gorges and billabongs – ruggedly beautiful places that can also be cruel and unforgiving.  He became an outstanding, ‘uncompromising bushman and stockman’, but did not take well to retirement.  In painting he discovered a way to relive his bush life. 

He is an intensely spiritual man, steeped in the traditional knowledge and ways of life and this is reflected in his artmaking.  He is profoundly aware of the negative effects of ‘white man’s rules’ on his people.  His most characteristic artistic motifs are the jalalas (marking stones used to denote boundaries between lands and to mark sacred sites) and the wandjinas (spirit figures who are part of the Aboriginal creation story).  His paintings exude a palpable spirituality and each one has a fascinating story to tell.

Jack works primarily with yellow, red, white and black ochres.  His wandjinas, with their halo-like auras are depicted in quite neutral tones, befitting their spectral, other-worldly natures.  But many paintings have strong swathes of colour as well, and Jack Dale is one of the few Aboriginal artists who has access to the rare blue ochre, used to great effect, for example in the work ‘Chained men and prison boab’, with its delightful idiosyncratic perspective and spatial rendering.    

This major show of Jack Dale’s work is complemented by several canvases by his wife, Biddy Dale.  These bright, bold, quasi-naive paintings of engagingly grotesque figures depict argulas, spirit figures found in rock paintings.  It is thought that they were originally painted as a form of warning on rock walls, but their exact meaning is unclear. 

Jack Dale has recently been considering putting down his brush and has spoken of giving up his art practice altogether.  He painted a significant body of work in late 2006, but while we cannot be sure, this exhibition may represent one of the last opportunities to acquire work by this unique indigenous artist, a real ‘character’ who is, indeed, Kimberley personified. 

Diana Klaosen  2007