Nora Davidson - Featured Artist

Nora was born near the Community of Jameson where her family holds the story for Illurpa. Nora now lives at Blackstone with her family and enjoys the traditional life offered here and is a regular visitor to the Blackstone Art Centre. Her paintings have come a long way in the past couple of months showing a contemporary innovating style with lush, vibrant dotting. When artists such as Nora paint every day with works improving with every canvas offered to her, something magical happens. A Break-through work!

At the Blackstone Art Centre, we talk about the world money crisis and its effects on painting sales. Then we discuss what is important about painting, and how the stories and knowledge of the country painted is vital to the future success of any artist. We talk about painting the POWER back into painting and... every now and then a painter steps up and paints somthing magical.

The work shown here depicts, sand dunes, bush foods and spinifex grasses and rock holes. Nora tells me that the rock holes shown are very important to her family and that she has depicted the two middle rock holes with blue showing that they are 'living water' and that the water flows from them more than the others which will dry up when there is no rain. She explains that the green has been painted to depict more growth near where the water flows and with that growth, there is an abundance of bush foods.

Nora has taken the ideas of her country and the stories she was told as a young girl and depicted them elegantly with a depth of knowledge, subtle yet sacred and vital to her ancestors way of life. Nora is proud of this work and has understood the painting medium to be used to powerfully covey her bush past. The colours are rich and textural conveying her love of country, and purposefully explored to allow others a glimpse of her heritage and willingly shares her living knowledge with others. We are lucky to have such a wonderfully gifted artist painting for Papulankutja Artists, playing her role to keep our culture and Art Centre STRONG!