Judy Watson

Watson’s matrilineal link to the country of her ancestors has always been central to her printmaking and painting. The hidden histories of Indigenous experience on the colonial frontier – particularly those of women – continue to inspire her. Watson seeks the indelible impressions of past presence on the landscape – rubbings, engravings and incisions – and subtly inscribes them upon her work. Often using natural materials found in situ, she colours the canvas while it is laid wet on the ground, allowing the earth’s contours to form a blueprint for the pigments pooling upon it.
 
Art Gallery of New South Wales
 
 Senior Curator and anthropologist Margie West comments: “Even though the messages in her work are often tough, they are conveyed in an almost subliminal and subtle way, to be discovered in the layering of the surface and the imagery that floats mirage-like on it.”   
 
Download the memory scars, dreams and gardens catalogue essay (13 November to 12 December 2020) by Katina Davidson.