Indigenous Art Quotes

The aboriginal women leaders of Papunya - the Papunya Artists - performed a dance for me: the Honey Ant dance. They'd never done it for anyone else. They honoured me with a ceremonial stick that signifies the story of the land.

Ledger art represents a spirit which has lasted through the hardships and turmoil. It is my goal and ambition that this style of pictograph art continues to pay tribute to the perseverance of my ancestors who adapted and created works of art during a period of life changing turmoil and injustice.

I admit clearly and frankly that early Mexican art formed my views of carving as much as anything I could do.

I've been very influenced by Inuit art especially some drawings and watercolors I've seen.

I've got tonnes of aboriginal and Native American art, but I'd like even more.

On the night of the 1st of September we observed for the first time signs of the natives being in the neighbourhood. Fires were seen on the low land near Cape Frederick Henry, and at daylight we saw the natives with our glasses.

QVB have a long history of supporting Australian talent.

You can create something strong in art with a few notes. It is like how Aboriginal drawings have a simplicity that is incredibly rich.

The trouble is, once you say something about a source, then you've pegged it down, and so now I'm reluctant to say anything. If I say I developed 50 different shapes from Mississippian tumuli, that doesn't mean they're copies of tumuli - I'm not ripping off those shapes.

From the age of about 8 to the age of about 15, I was obsessed with Native Americans.

I made my personal discovery of Emily Carr while visiting Victoria in 1981 to write a travel article. Immediately, her strong colors attracted me; her spunk fascinated me. Her down-to-earth voice in her writing appealed to me as authentic and original.

Latin American Art is an operational term used to describe art actually made in the more than twenty countries that make up Latin America and that encompass Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean.

We are so fortunate, as Australians, to have among us the oldest continuing cultures in human history. Cultures that link our nation with deepest antiquity. We have Aboriginal rock art in the Kimberley that is as ancient as the great Palaeolithic cave paintings at Altamira and Lascaux in Europe.

Look at it this way - a totem pole is just a decorated tree. My work is a confessional.

Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.

There has always been quite a strong black and white art tradition in Australia, with quite a large contingent of cartoonists, given the size of the population.

At its best, Aboriginal art has been effective in translating an entire culture and the understanding of an entire continent. Indeed, the more we interpret Australia through Aboriginal eyes, through the experience of their long and epic story, the more we allow ourselves to understand the land we share.

We settled this continent without art. So it was easy for us to treat it as an imported luxury, not a necessity.

Tribal designs are a part of my heritage. It boils down to the influences from my father, Viv Richards' side.

The celebrated Aboriginal painter Albert Namatjira loved the Ghost Gums of the Northern Territory... They are evocatively Australian, their white trunks contrasting with the red earth and the deep blue sky of the Dreamtime region that has for centuries sustained Namatjira's Aranda people.

I always think of the Pacific Northwest as giant trees, and rain, and clouds and dampness, like the Native American art from that area.

I don't want to collect Indian art, though pots and beadwork and blankets made by Indians remain the most beautiful art objects in the American West, in my opinion.

The thing we often forget to talk about, or perhaps we take for granted, is our country's dazzling beauty. Our natural environment is so much a part of Australia's art, writing, music and culture, both indigenous and non indigenous.

Little do we find any Phoenician architecture or plastic art at all comparable even to those of Italy, to say nothing of the lands where art was native.

While fractal geometry is often used in high-tech science, its patterns are surprisingly common in traditional African designs.