My Country and Bush Medicine painting, by Betty Pula Morton, a finalist in the 2019 Hadley’s Art prize for Australian landscape painting.
Bay Gallery Home has sold many exceptional Betty’s since we started dealing with her art centre. We also chose to translate one of her paintings into wallpaper and fabric.
Betty is an incredibly gifted artist whose work is endlessly fascinating. We wish her all the luck in winning the prize on 19 July 2019!
Please follow the link to see the other finalists and find out more about the Hadley Art Prize.
Rosie Ngwarraye Ross, one of our favourite Central Desert artists, painting in the art centre with fellow artists on what’s bound to be a hot day but they like to stay rugged up when it’s anything less than 40 degrees!
Rosie uses a bold palette to capture her love of the wild desert flowers and bush medicine plants found across her Country.
The omission of the sky in many of this groups compositions allows you to scan the landscape without any focal point thereby drawing your eye across the painting - in no particular order. It is when looking at these works, sometimes for the umpteenth time, we find something new. Almost like it’s secret.
We have a new Rosie in stock which will share with you in a blog early next week. Keep an eye out for it when it’s uploaded for sale on the website. It reminds us of a Monet…
We're off to Surface Design at the Business Design Centre in Islington today. We have three new wallpapers under development so will be meeting with various collaborators at the show to discuss these and other exciting plans we have. It's always good to see developments in the surfacing world and where our new products might find their place market. Wish list is to work with Kit Kemp of Firmdale Hotels who, among others has worked with A Rum Fellow who we admire greatly.
Below you can see a sneak preview of our 'My Country - Yellow' available soon.
Joycie Pitjara Morton painting, selected on a trip to Australia a year ago, translated into a stunning wallpaper. Joycie will receive money for the sale of each roll her designs appear on.
My Country, Wallpaper GREEN is a translation of a painting by Lilly Kemarre Morton, depicting the Australian outback: bush tucker & bush medicine plentiful after the rains.
Notice the sugar bag tree, rendered here in yellow by Lilly – a natural bee sweetener found in tree hollows, it is a favoured motif of hers.
Lilly's husband is the legendary Banjo Petyarre Morton, who led the historical Aboriginal stockmen walk-offs of 1949, successfully winning the fundamental right to earn wages instead of rations.
Bay Gallery Home's My Country Wallpaper, GREEN.
Lilly's landscapes beautifully communicate the rich knowledge she possesses of both medicinal plants and country, the heart of her culture.
As a young girl, Lilly lived traditionally off of the land with her family and Alyawarr people. In Lilly's lifetime, she has experienced and borne witness to the irreversible changes of country and way of life, previously unchanged for thousands of years.
She is now a kind and gentle elder of the community, and often tells her family and friends stories of how life used to be in Alywarre, her language. These stories are also a great inspiration for many of the artists within the community.
Lilly is passionate about nature, especially her country and the plants that grow on it, and though she has little English, she is ever keen to explain the various bush medicines which she depicts in her paintings.
