The Indigenous artist Lindsay Bird is one of the great old men of Aboriginal Art who made his reputation overseas and in Australia with significant works which were very strong and traditional.  He secured a special place for himself in the art history of his country and he came to attention as early as 1988 at an exhibition entitled “Time Before Time” in the Austral Gallery, St Louis, USA. Since his paintings have been incorporated in important collections like the Holmes a Court Collection in Western Australia, the Kelton Foundation in Santa Monica USA, The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane.

Lindsay Bird was born c 1935 on Bushy Park Station north of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. As a young man he worked with sheep and traversed the country with his parents and family. His language is Eastern Anmatyerre and he is familiar with both, the traditional Aboriginal and western ways. Lindsay Bird knows how to hunt with spears as well as a rifle. He has a great deal of knowledge about ceremonies, bush tucker and bush medicine. This knowledge he communicates in his paintings.

On them we see motifs of concentric circles (waterholes and rockholes), meandering lines (trails of ancestors crossing the country), foot prints of animals, bush foods like bush plums represented by dots in various colours (green colour for ripe one’s, black colour for old one’s) or witchetty grubs painted as short lines or half circles. Some paintings show the Carpet Snake (Utnea) and others Mulga Berries.

It is mostly very practical information about the land, flora, fauna including; medicinally useful plants, edible plants, dangerous regions, locations of subterranean waterways, animal habits, how to hunt, where and when to hunt, where and when to gather and tribal relationships.

^© Boomerang Art 2010