Australian Aboriginal people have a tradition of using ochre pigment to paint that dates back to ancient times. These ochres are primarily natural pigments and minerals found in the soil or even in charcoal. Paintings using these natural pigments (colours) depict Aboriginal Dreamtime stories and maps. They were used either in body painting, rock painting, on artefacts, or sometimes even on sand.

There are sites in Australia where the Aboriginal ochre painting has been dated at least 65,000 years old. The discovery of this cave rock art makes Aboriginal people one of the oldest continuous cultures on the planet.

Australian Aboriginal people never had a written language, so their ochre paintings told important traditional stories. They have rich oral traditions, such as stories and songs. In their paintings, they also use symbols like concentric circles, U shapes, and straight stick forms. The symbols vary depending on where an artist is from. These symbols were painted using the natural ochre pigments that were found or specifically mined. Ochre is the main medium used in Australia's ancient Kimberley rock art.

Read: Kimberley Rock Art: A Traditional Owner's Perspective

Ochre painting was used for storytelling on rock walls and decoration of possessions. It is especially prized for body painting for big ceremonies, initiation ceremonies, or dances related to rain. The Seven Sisters stories were often represented by ochre pigments in women's body painting and men's paintings. Several communities maintain a tradition of painting their contemporary fine art using local ochre pigment.

Originally, ochres had enormous value for Aboriginal people. They were traded between different tribal groups across Australia. There were trade routes that went through Asia. Some were more highly prized than others. Some places didn't have a lot of ochres, but they still had the same need to tell stories and record images of Dreamtime spirits. Sometimes, the ochre paintings warn about hazards or give instructions on finding the nearest water hole. They might show a map of where there was good hunting for different types of animals and fish. However, the main use was in storytelling and depicting important Spirits and totems.

Read: Science Uses Ochre To Map Ancient Aboriginal Trading Routes

There are only about six available colours even with blending and mixing, so this did create a limited palette. In some ways, these palette restrictions also produced an art form that was more rigorous and more defined. It taught people to consider the use of colour. A limited palette teaches an artist which colours to use next to another. The tradition of Aboriginal ochre painting carried on for tens of thousands of years and helped communicate Aboriginal culture and character to a wide audience.

View: Aboriginal Ochre Painting Colour Palettes

The advent of the Aboriginal fine art movement around 1971 saw the introduction of acrylics or synthetic polymers. Suddenly, there was a rainbow of colours available to artists. Initially, many artists, like those in Papunya, embraced the use of acrylics because they were easier to use and available. You didn't have to mix them with a binder to affix them to a board or an artefact or cave wall. They were a lot simpler to use. Even so, many artists stayed with the original palette even when using acrylics. This carried on for quite a few years.

Read: Early Influence of Geoffrey Bardon

It wasn't until artists like Walmajarri Jimmy Pike from the Kimberley came around in the 1980's that the use of colour shifted. He introduced extremely strong, vibrant acrylic colours and even texta colours into his paintings. His influence completely transformed the contemporary Aboriginal fine art movement. There was then a transitional phase from ochre to acrylic in the Central and Western deserts. After that, there was a real flourish of colour across the whole movement. Artists were embracing colour and the different options it gave them. Many of the artists, even though they had often worked with a limited palette most of their lives, were brilliant colourists, and natural at using colours. You see artists putting colours together that you wouldn't think would work. Instinctively they knew what they were doing.

The use of bright colours underpinned the rebirth of the Aboriginal fine art movement to its recent peak in 2007 where it achieved international worldwide success. Had contemporary Aboriginal painting just been limited to just the ochre palette, perhaps it might not have had the same impact worldwide. Many believe that bright acrylic painting sparked the interest which then spread to include the ochre painting.

Today, several communities still use traditional ochre pigments in their paintings. One of the main ones is the Warmun Art Centre in the Kimberley. This used to be called Turkey Creek. Some of the greatest of the Aboriginal fine art movement have worked with ochre paint.

Read: Wandjinas, Ochre and The Art of Mowanjum People

The use of natural ochre pigments and the limited palette probably led to the genesis of one of the greatest artists, Rover Thomas Joolama. He was famous for his very spare paintings where less is more. He went on to achieve international success. This is in part due to his use of natural ochre pigments, which informed his storytelling and his painting skills. Some of the other greats from the movement were Queenie McKenzie, Jack Britten, and Hector Jandanay, who came from one community alone. They carried the banner for ochre pigment painting.

In the Northern Territory, specifically in the Arnhem Land and in the Tiwi Islands, the adherence to natural ochre pigment carries on to this very day. Many artists in those communities use rarrk, which is a crosshatching format of painting using natural ochre pigments. In this crosshatching, each artist has their own identifying rarrk. They're all painted in the limited palette of natural ochre pigments. In Arnhem Land they're still using ochre and their works are very fine. They're also often figurative. Some also embrace the technique that today call X-ray style where you can see the internal workings of animals. They also use the ochres to paint totems, and statues and carvings, usually made out of the local ironwood, but also of other woods found up in the tropics. To this very day most of the art from those particular regions in the Northern Territory and Arnhem Land, is still painted in traditional ochre pigments. Even with the body paintings that still carry on the ancient traditions of using ochre pigments.

Read: Tiwi Island Ochre Colour Palette

Larrakitj memorial poles are found in Arnhem Land. They are made from hollowed-out stringybark logs painted with ochres. They were designed as coffins.

There is still widespread use of ochre pigments for ceremonial dances and corroborees. This includes many Aboriginal communities who have embraced acrylics and synthetic polymers for their paintings. Ochre still has a spiritual significance to Aboriginal people because it has that ancient connection that goes back unbroken for tens of thousands of years. The use of ochre underpins, to a large extent, Aboriginal art and culture from all around Australia.

The surface of an ochre painting can be more vulnerable than the surface of an acrylic work. In the article below an expert in ochre painting restoration discusses the ochre medium and the type of care required for these artworks.

Read: Restoration of Australian Aboriginal Ochre Paintings