Waterhole dreaming

I ran across Carbiene's work last night by accident and I could not get enough. The color combinations are delicious.  

Carbiene McDonald was born in Papunya in 1961, son of Snowy McDonald and as a young man, he travelled back to his father's homelands and inherited his Tjukurrpa (Dreaming). This Dreaming is associated with a series of waterholes running between Docker River and Kata Tjuta. Specifically, it includes four important sites: Petermann Ranges, Docker River, Kalaya Murrpu (Blood's Range) and Mulyayti near Kata Tjuta. 

Carbiene’s work embodies quality of innovation within tradition, and his practice of filling the canvas with coloured squares of loose acrylic paint creates work of immense depth and sophistication. Having only taken up painting later in life in 2018, his passion for painting coupled with his extreme dedication and enthusiasm has led him to quickly make a name for himself.

"Carbiene McDonald will tell you that he is “a happy man”.  And why wouldn’t he be? Within a year of painting his first canvas, he was being feted as the recipient of the $100,000 Hadley Art Prize, one of the richest landscape prizes in the world. The day I met him happiness did indeed radiate from him like the light from the canvases that flow off his brush. After introducing himself and confidently shaking my hand, he resumed his place cross-legged on the loor and for the next several hours focussed single-mindedly on mapping out his next painting: a vast field of loosely painted contiguous squares, each divided into quadrants signifying the Four Dreamings he invariably paints. 

Carbiene McDonald has lived his entire life in Papunya – occasionally Alice Springs. The trip to Tasmania for the prize giving was his first out of Central Australia. He was born in Papunya in 1961, a year after the settlement was officially opened, son of Pitjantjatjara,/Yankuntjatjara/Mantjintjarra man, Snowy McDonald Tjampitjinpa and his first wife Ratitjawalya. He was ten years old, attending Papunya Special School, when he saw the famous murals being painted that helped kick off the Papunya art movement in 1971. His paintings have the same creamy softness of light that characterised those of his father’s close countryman Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi, one of the original Papunya masters. He may have seen some of them being created: Carbiene’s extended family includes Lungkarta’s eldest daughter Martha McDonald Napaltjarri who became Snowy’s second wife. Napaltjarri’s grandson John Scott Rowe, artworker and artist with Papunya Tjupi for years now, was instrumental in persuading Carbiene to take up painting. Scott Rowe is related on his father’s side to Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula – his uncle. 

In a way this is unremarkable - family artistic dynasties and interconnections like these are everywhere you look in Papunya. On the other hand, it underlines a crucial aspect of Carbiene McDonald Tjangala’s story: that it is inseparable from the larger story of the resurgence of painting at Papunya in the 21 st century. Fifty years on from those momentous days when Papunya saw the birth of the contemporary Indigenous art movement, it is again a vital centre of collective creative and cultural expression. New generations of artists are building on the achievements of their forefathers and mothers. With the passing over the last two years of the last surviving greats of that first golden era of Papunya painting, Kumantjayi Long Tjakamarra (1932-2019) and Kumantjayi Nelson Jagamarra (1947-2020), a new cohort of Papunya painting men is emergingfrom their long shadow."