Texas Downs, 2004

natural earth pigments on canvas

120 x 90 cm

Est. $1,500 – $2,500

Provenance: Warmun Art Centre, Turkey Creek, WA, Cat No. WAC 081/04 Private Collection, NSW, acquired from the above Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Warmun Art Centre
Artwork story: Texas Downs Station, as the Warmun Art Centre documentation records Carrington describing it, is “a place full of caves, waterholes and red hills” — beautiful country with plenty of water, rockpools and creeks. This is the land as she remembers it, and Texas Downs distils it to its essential elements: a warm terracotta sky above a ridge of rounded hills in deep red and ochre, each form outlined in fine white dot-work, and in the foreground two spiralling waterholes opening into the dark earth, their concentric coils drawing the eye inward to the Country's living core. Carrington was taught to see that Country through paint by two of the great figures of Gija art. At high school she was inspired to begin painting by her grandfather Hector Jandany, and by Queenie McKenzie, who came to Warmun School to teach Ngarrangkarni (Dreaming) stories and traditional methods to the next generation. She also sat with Jack Britten, watching the old people paint and absorbing what could not be taught in any other way. Her grandmother Betty Carrington is an established artist and the partner of renowned Warmun painter Patrick Mung Mung; her parents Churchill Cann and Sadie Carrington are both practising artists. By 2004 she had distinguished herself as the only artist at Warmun still working with natural binders, garliwan, and crushed leaf extracts from local eucalypts, binding ochres to canvas in the manner of Rover Thomas, Jack Britten and Jandany before acrylic binders became available. The surfaces that result carry a depth that places Texas Downs in direct continuity with the founding generation of Warmun painting.

Catalogues176 of 257

Click to enlarge

Sale 3 · Lot 28

Charlene Carrington

b. 1977

Region: Kimberley
Community: Warmun (Turkey Creek)
Language group: Gija (Gidja, Kija, Kitja, Kidja, Loonga)

Texas Downs, 2004

natural earth pigments on canvas

120 x 90 cm

Est. $1,500 – $2,500

Provenance: Warmun Art Centre, Turkey Creek, WA, Cat No. WAC 081/04 Private Collection, NSW, acquired from the above Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Warmun Art Centre
Artwork story: Texas Downs Station, as the Warmun Art Centre documentation records Carrington describing it, is “a place full of caves, waterholes and red hills” — beautiful country with plenty of water, rockpools and creeks. This is the land as she remembers it, and Texas Downs distils it to its essential elements: a warm terracotta sky above a ridge of rounded hills in deep red and ochre, each form outlined in fine white dot-work, and in the foreground two spiralling waterholes opening into the dark earth, their concentric coils drawing the eye inward to the Country's living core. Carrington was taught to see that Country through paint by two of the great figures of Gija art. At high school she was inspired to begin painting by her grandfather Hector Jandany, and by Queenie McKenzie, who came to Warmun School to teach Ngarrangkarni (Dreaming) stories and traditional methods to the next generation. She also sat with Jack Britten, watching the old people paint and absorbing what could not be taught in any other way. Her grandmother Betty Carrington is an established artist and the partner of renowned Warmun painter Patrick Mung Mung; her parents Churchill Cann and Sadie Carrington are both practising artists. By 2004 she had distinguished herself as the only artist at Warmun still working with natural binders, garliwan, and crushed leaf extracts from local eucalypts, binding ochres to canvas in the manner of Rover Thomas, Jack Britten and Jandany before acrylic binders became available. The surfaces that result carry a depth that places Texas Downs in direct continuity with the founding generation of Warmun painting.