Aboriginal Art of Painting - Essay Example

Name Tutor Course Date Introduction Australian indigenous art is regarded as the oldest ongoing tradition of art in the globe. The variety and quality of Australian indigenous art produced nowadays reflects the diversity and richness of indigenous culture and the distinct diversities between, languages, tribes, geographical landscapes and dialects. Aboriginal painting is the most common form of art and has always been significant part of Aboriginal life, connecting the past with the present, the aboriginal people and the land and the reality and supernatural. Aboriginal art of painting Traditional Aboriginal painting and symbols are an important part of much modern Aboriginal art. Aboriginal individuals have long painting artistic traditions in which they utilize traditional symbols and designs. When these painting designs are applied to any surfaces, when on a body of an individual engaging in a ceremony or on a shield, have the ability and power to modify the object to one with religious power and significance. Through the utilization of painting designs inherited from ancestors, traditional and modern artists continue their nation and the Dreaming. For instance, body decorations using ancestral designs of painting is a significant portion of several ceremonies. In central Australia ancestral designs are painted onto the body and face utilizing ochre ground to paste with water and applied in circles and stripes (Berndt, 110). The contemporary paintings of Western and Central Desert incorporated numerous of these designs. Whist majority of the most commonly utilized symbols are comparatively simple, they may be utilized to elaborate blends to illustrate more complex stories. Morphy (37) notes that a Water Dreaming painting may illustrate a U shaped for a human, sitting next to concentric circles or a circle showing a waterhole, and spiral lines illustrating running water. In this case, the painter is narrating the story of the power of water man to invoke the rain. Painting, particularly dot paintings represent the conventional art form of the Aboriginal people in Western Australia Central Desert. The canvas is plaster is covered with small dots which generate symbols and patterns. These symbols are easily recognized by individuals who are familiar with Dreamtime story. Therefore, painting is used to illustrate the Dreamtime for aborigines which are the period which the earth obtained its present form and in which the cycles and patterns of life started. At times creating their surroundings and at times changing into people or animals, the Dreamtime reflects the characters and events of everyday life within the Australian desert. Aboriginal painting expresses Dreamtime, the time before time, or the period of creation of all things. The Dreamtime stories teach about life, including love, food, birth, warfare, marriage, hunting, death and creation (Morphy, 50). The Aboriginal conventional way of to educate people on Aboriginal culture, laws and history was storytelling, utilizing combination of art forms like singing, music painting , and painting to show the pre historic Dreamtime stories. According to Berndt, (121), Traditionally, individuals telling stories would utilize the hunting sound of didgeridoo with dances and songs, but also created symbolic drawings. These designs were conventionally utilized as body paint decorations for the corrrpborees and as sand paintings in ceremonial purposes. In modern days, paintings are created utilizing modern day materials but use of conventional art styles and symbols assists to maintain this pre historic culture alive. The symbols utilized in modern aboriginal paintings are similar to those found on rock art and cave paintings. How aboriginal painting reflects indigenous connection to the traditional environment Dreaming is regarded as the central point of Aboriginal life, religion and environment. They are inspired through their dream which is reflected in their paintings and art forms. For a typical Aboriginal, dreaming isn’t merely an activity; it is an insight which has assisted them to show diverse stories like the formation of life and earth. The early paintings found in caves bore a resemblance to handprints and footprints. A gradual shift was noticed and the paintings represented rituals, human and hunt. It was discovered that it was Dreaming that has inspired painting form of art. For aboriginal individuals who follow the conventional beliefs, the Dreaming is extremely personal (Eagle, 236). Every individual is connected to her or his individual totem or Dreaming, a belief that involves the notion that creator of the ancestors are physically alive in the natural features of landscape in which they once resided. Aboriginal Dreaming is about the land in which the people live in. Aboriginals experience a connection to their environment and it’s the responsibility of the Aborigines to take care of their land, an obligation that was passed down to them by the ancestors (Isaacs, 214). A universal concept amongst the Aboriginal people is that all of them came from the Dreamtime and they are highly connected to it. They feel that they are one with mountains and nature and by looking at the Australian story of creation; it displays infinite connection between man and the nature. For instance the Sydney rock engravings and paintings reflect artistic inclinations of the Aboriginal populace before the settlement of the Europeans in the historical city. Rock paintings and engravings display the close relationship that the Australian Aboriginal population had with the sea. The paintings and engravings were mainly about creatures that were related to the se like shark and whales. Gwion Gwion, a type of rock painting found in caves, is deemed to be a culture that subsisted before Aboriginal culture as it is known in modern days (Eagle, 240-241). The Aboriginal forms of art and paintings have displayed family as symbolic. On the rock walls, people have drawn ceremonial boards and paintings. They have a feeling that they are connected with cosmos things such as mountains, rivers and trees. Isaacs notes that spiritual powers have assisted them to see beyond the apparent actuality and have moved them to a world where they are able to look and see concealed powers (314-315). The Aboriginal paintings are more than an assimilation of colors and figures, but had and have a life of its own. It was believed that the object displayed in the painting is good and real, and if it is not respected, it will easily emerge out of the particular painting and subdue the sense of painter. Aspects displayed in Aboriginal painting, and the particular dimensions of indigeneity that it manifests Finley (20) argues that the Aboriginal people of Australia have been employing painting to create pictures whose symbolism and patterns relate to myths and stories of the Australian Aboriginal cultural and tribal history, their Dreamtime. The Dreamtime is the holy world of the Aboriginal ancestral spirits with whom the Aboriginal people consider as the creator of every living thing. The earliest types of Aboriginal are within Australian Aboriginal people. Body painting was and is still a significant portion of conventional Aboriginal religious ceremonies. The patterns and designs painted on the body of the participants are often owned by their respective tribe and assist to identify family and tribal affiliations. On a highly impressive scale, Australian Aboriginal rock paintings are found all over Australia and they may vary from the complex to the simple and the highly concrete to the very abstract. While the forms shift across the continent, particular features stay the same. Today, there are several indigenous Aboriginal who work with traditional western materials like canvas, board, and acrylics to make beautiful visual effects of modern painting, but have synthesized old conventional imagery to traditional techniques (Isaacs, 305). Australian Aboriginal people have lived for thousands of years, usually in quite inhospitable and challenging, and their immense success was dominantly as a result of the indigenous innate ability of the Aboriginal to adapt and the expression of this adaptability can apparently be seen in modern day magnificent Australian Aboriginal painting. Aboriginal people have traditionally utilized materials available to them to represent the Dreaming and their world. As a consequence, art forms differed in different regions of Australia ( Finley, 47). In Central Desert body painting and drawing was an important form of art though varying in materials, meaning, method and styles. The Western Desert who are a faction of Aboriginal artists have adapted their tribal forms of art to the western world but solely with regard to western techniques and materials which they use, and the subject issue tightly remains focused on the imagery and stories which was passed to them by their ethnic ancestors. In the Arnhem Land, the Yolgnu or Aborigines, still conduct their lives in the traditional way of performing fishing, hunting and conducting ceremonies that may last for several days. Arnhem Land art is discerned by the raark or cross hatching design. Usually, the works display animal or human figures on them, they might be bold with particular patters and display stories of Dreamtime creation (Bardon, 68). There are several different communities within Arnhem Land who make use of cross hatching style, though with some variation. The raark work displays a unity between all communities who live in Arnhem Land and it has a shimmering appearance executed well. According to Bardon, indigenous works are still painted in earth pigments and natural ochres, but when artists make use of acrylic paint, works are applied in the conventional earth pigment colours. Traditionally, females were not allowed to paint but they were capable of helping their husbands in doing the highly repetitious work (71). Nowadays, this has considerably changed and numerous female artists from this region are making exquisite works for art market. Conclusion Aboriginal painting is a significant form of art that enable the Australian Aboriginal people to connect with the environment, ancestors and beliefs. The Australian Aboriginal people have used painting to create pictures with stories and myths of Aboriginal tribal history and culture, the Dreamtime. Since Dreamtime is the sacred world of the ancestral spirits of the Aborigines, individuals consider is it as the source of all things, including their beliefs, environment and ancestors. Works Cited Berndt, Ronald. Australian Aboriginal art. Oxford: Macmillan, 1998. P 117 Eagle, Martins. Traditions of representing the land in Aboriginal art, Art and Australia, vol37, no.2, p 236-244, 2000. Morphy, Howard. Seeing Aboriginal Art in the Gallery” Humanities Research vol 8, no. 1, p 37- 50, 2001. Bardon, Geoff. Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert, Rigby Adelaide, 1996. Finley, Carol. Aboriginal Art of Australia: Exploring Cultural Traditions. Sydney: Lerner Publications, 1999. Isaacs, Jennifer . Australian Aboriginal Paintings. Sydney: Weldon Publishing, 1989. Read More