She trusted the paint

how Emily Kame Kngwarreye revealed a hidden world

She saw what could still be done; that was her great achievement. She understood W.B. Yeats’ phrase “the delighted eye” and she gave it an intense and active meaning. There is a bravery and sweep in her gestures as a painter, and a sort of fearlessness. She was not afraid, for example, to repeat herself, to make the same type of marks and see then what surprise the moment of making would bring. She was not afraid either to change what she was doing, to find a whole new set of tones and textures. And she was not afraid of beauty, of finding a set of gorgeous colours and seeing where they would take her. Neither had she any fear of working with a more muted palette, using the colour black, for example, with a magisterial confidence.

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