Spirituality in Place: Capturing the Essence of North Queensland through Painting

Barbara Cheshire,Ryan Daniel

doi:10.25120/etropic.15.1.2016.3354

Abstract

For centuries, artists have been inspired by place. This perception and awareness of place can also involve a spiritual connection. Artists from both Aboriginal culture and white settlement in Australia have painted works which reveal a deep spiritual connection to place. One of the geographical areas that has inspired several artists is North Queensland, which offers a rich tapestry of dry and wet tropical environments. This article considers an historical overview and deconstructs the work of four contemporary painters (Firth-Smith, Silver, Watson, and Cheshire) who have been inspired by the place that is North Queensland, in order to consider the ways in which their work reveals a spiritual connection to place.

Highlights

Many Australian artists have drawn on Judaic or Christian traditions and the root symbols of religion that located them in the context of great antiquity
For centuries the place that is North Queensland has offered painters both a link to the spirituality of the land and the opportunity to explore a connection between landscape and their own intimate sense of spirituality
While this research has identified some of the key influences and underpinnings relevant to a small group of artists and selected works, there is ample opportunity to further examine connections to place in terms of painters in North Queensland, but further afield in other tropical regions of Australia, as well as around the globe

Summary

Spiritual art in Australia

Many Australian artists have drawn on Judaic or Christian traditions and the root symbols of religion that located them in the context of great antiquity. Moon (2004) argues that the many different approaches to visual expression of religious painting in Australia give evidence that religious thinking, and the power of its symbols and accounts of human-divine interaction, still inform, inspire, and confront many artists These are consistent with those “who seek a life close to God to involve themselves in creative work” Artists William Ferguson (b.1932), Mirlkitjungu Millie Skeen (b.1935), Kathleen Petyarre (b.1940), Kate Briscoe (b.1944), and Marion Borgelt (b.1954) are examples of Australian painters who express an understanding of the mystical and spiritual through the experiential dimension of art They draw personal attention to different pictorial devices used for signifying the spiritual. Each of these five artists have used common denominators to portray the spiritual in their paintings: a time zone, colour to represent emotional states and the energy of colour itself, universal symbolism to portray the concept, and “a strong element of attention to formalism in the compositions as an ongoing language of assessment” (Cree & Drury, 2000, p. 52)

An artistic attraction to North Queensland as place

Exploring spiritual responses to the place that is North Queensland

Discussion

Conclusions

Works Cited