2020 Staff Christmas Picks Under $700
We asked the Japingka staff to choose a painting they'd like to get for Christmas. Here is our in-house Santa wish list. If you'd like to do some Christmas shopping for yourself here's a full list of Aboriginal art by price range. If you are looking for a special present, give us a call and we'll arrange a gift certificate for you.
Annette Krah
Being an ocean person, I love spending a lot of my time by the sea. This painting is my Christmas pick because it reminds me of places like Fremantle, Coogee and Rottnest. I'm attracted to the blue together with the landscape. There's a fresh beach feel about it, so sparkly and bright and optimistic. It's punchy, exciting and joyful.
David Wroth
I love this work by Naomi Price. She's from a famous painting family - Anna Petyarre is her mother. This work is full of information about different types of food and the natural world of the Utopia homelands. Naomi's paintings are rich with colour and design and they're always engrossing. She is sharing her excitement about her own country and its resources. People often think of the desert as being rather light-on for resources, but Utopia women have always been close to the things that feed their people, with both ceremonies, painting and stories. Naomi's paintings use really exuberant symbols that are particular to her family. I don't see this kind of thing coming from other artists. It's a joyful composition in terms of colour and design and makes you feel, "Oh yes, this is a celebration of country."
Jody Fitzhardinge
I've chosen this one because it has a lot of space and movement in it. It's a women's story showing journey lines between various sacred sites and women sitting around. I like her palette. I love the subtle grains and the use of and black and whites. I think that the whole canvas has a kind of painterly quality. There's a lovely feeling of space and movement.
Ian Plunkett
A great Christmas present would be this painting by Walala Tjapaltjari. It's a Tingari story. It's a creation story which ties in quite nicely with Christmas which also has the theme of beginnings. Walala came out of the desert in 1984, and had his first contact with Western culture. He had never seen a car before. His stories and his paintings are pristine. That's what I like about them. There's an unbroken link that goes right back to the beginning of the Dreamtime. These little squares are each a block of land that's been sung into existence by the Tingari spirits. The blackness you see in the background is the preexisting void, where there was nothing before. The Tingari spirits and the elders went through the land, singing all this land to existence and creating it. There's a great use of colour in this work. It's very restrained, and it tells such a wonderful story. It belies the complex creation story underlying it.
Natalia Podhjska
I'm in love with the paintings by this artist. Women's ceremonies feature in a lot of her work. I find this really interesting. All of her paintings have these very vibrant beautiful colours. The paintings use a lot of symbolism. The women come together, do a ceremony and then make the art together. I enjoy all the small details, lots of circles, lots of female symbolism. There's a beautiful positive energy. I've also chosen this as my Christmas pick because the colour red always reminds me of Christmas time.