Taking a Look at Lin Onus

Jeffrey Smart was an artist with exemplary vision and intense productivity throughout his career. Smart was a master of painting urban landscapes and industrial wastelands with “precise attention to clean lines, composition and geometry” (Pearce, 2012). The development of his visual bloodstream can be attributed to significant architectural and cultural influences in his hometown Adelaide, Australia, as well as Sydney, Rome and Tuscany.

Furthermore, while he was honored and recognized by the inherent value of Native American history and the unbroken connection Indigenous peoples have with their roots, his art work is not the result of a desire to depict a romanticized and stagnant expression of a bygone historical era. His work and hope were capturing movement which made his art served as a metaphor for the viewer which boldly states that Indigenous American cultures while intimately connected to their history are in fact contemporary, alive, and constantly

In Berthe Morisot’s painting, she uses colors ranging from blue to green to yellow to orange. She uses paint thinly but in big brush stroke but her color was dull. Her brush strokes are in a cross hatching manner. This method of cross hatching creates depth and shadows on the foreground. Intermixed, in her piece are signs of dry brush strokes. Morisot’s figure is enticing to the viewer by staring back at the onlooker. Morisot’s painting looks very freeing as that is what she longs for. She has a sketch like quality about her painting.

Albert Namatjira was born on the 28th of July 1902 in Hermannsburg (Ntaria), Northern Territory. In 1905, the family received into the Lutheran Church, this was the beginning of a transition. Albert was born as Elea, however later on his name was changed to Albert after being baptized. After being baptized, Albert’s father was given the name Jonathan and his mother was blessed with the name Emilie. During Albert’s school years, he attended Hermannsburg Mission School. He lived in an all boys’ dormitory away from his family. Growing up, Albert sketched many things. He mainly sketched all his surroundings, the landscape around him and in some cases he even made artefacts out of wood. During the Aboriginal expedition people became extremely attracted to his great landscapes due to his undeniable talent. The first time Albert left Mission School was at the age of thirteen for six months (what did he do??). After

Androgyny is the name of one in many beautiful paintings by the famous Ojibwa artist, Norval Morrisseau. Created in 1983, the artwork is 366cm x 610cm in size. Like all of his other works, he painted using mostly acrylic for this one too. Androgyny is filled with natural aspects resulting to a very busy and compact effect. There is a hill right on the bottom center with a hole inside filled with fish swimming to the left. While, the hill itself has a lot of animals that are connected with thin lines and a human lying against the tunnel. A snake's tail is seen half wrapped around the human’s head. However the snake’s head was faced to the center of the painting, poking halfway out of the hill.

Apparent in his works are themes such as racism, identity and culture that references the artist’s own backgrounds and experiences. Ah Kee draws on his own experiences of being and aboriginal Australian in the contemporary life in Australia.

The identity of Australia as a place comes from both its physical features and the atmosphere, which is often created by its physical appearance. Three artists who have depicted the Australian landscape in different styles are Arthur Streeton, John Olsen and Sally Morgan. Streeton’s works are in a realistic but lively style typical of the Heidelberg school. He was intent on recreating the light and warmth of the land. Olsen and Morgan’s works, on the other hand, offer more abstract interpretations of the land. During the 1960s and 1970s, Olsen captured the essence and the energy of the landscape with his bold and bright brushwork whilst Morgan’s work from the 1980s portrays Australia from an indigenous perspective, which she achieves through her use of Aboriginal symbolism and cultural imagery.

Aboriginal art in Australia is both beautiful and meaningful. According to Perkins, Hetti and West (2007) Aboriginal art allows for reconciliation of the events of the past two centuries’ that is used as inspiration for their work. Whilst researching the Indigenous cultural heritage of Mount Barker, Western Australia I came across a well know Noongar artist from the region, Charlie Colbung. Colbung was born in Mount Barker in 1970 and still resides in the South West region where he is an Indigenous health worker as well as an Indigenous programs officer for the Great Southern TAFE (Design and Art Australia, n.d.). There are two prominent themes in Aboriginal art consisting of both country such as the land and kinship, the people (Perkins, Hetti

Throughout history, societies have defined and transformed themselves through their art. When looking at works of art today, a person sees not only the work of art itself, but also the world from which it came from. The same is true for this transformation mask, which reflects the works of art and beliefs of the Northwest Coast Tribes.

As I explored the James T. Bialac Native American Art Collection at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, I came across two paintings that really stood out to me because of their relevance to what we have been learning in class. In muted tones of blue and yellow, Harry Oosahwee’s (Cherokee) One Fall Morning depicts a Cherokee family in a barren rural landscape; animals and plants dot the landscape, and a small wooden house sits on the far right of the painting accompanied by a father, mother, and child to the left.

Only the mango tree that soared and sprawled over the native scrub seemed out of place in the otherwise familiar scene. A bush clearing, a tent, a campfire, and an old bushie — an artist might title a painting The Romance of the Aussie Bush. In fact, an observer would soon sketch a likeness, though not with artistic intent and the drawing later lost amid the chaos of a murder investigation.

The artist’s job is to be a witness to their time and location in history. They record and reflect on events and themes that have occurred in their personal life and society around them. Gordon Bennett creates artworks exploring Australian colonialism and the impact it has had on Aboriginal History. Bennett’s work bares witness to the disregard for Aboriginal people in history, in his time and today. Bennet grew up unaware of his indigenous heritage.

Using natural phenomenon as a starting point for abstraction, Mark Grotjahn’s paintings straddle the polarities of artifice and nature. His painting, Lavender Butterfly Jacaranda over Green (Fig. 2), expresses his fascination with nature. Transferring the experience of observation to an intrigue of creative possibility, Grotjahn harnesses the mysticism of nature through aesthetic formality.

Throughout Stephen’s early life the idea of art is almost lost for him. Stephen always has the idea of art in his mind and can be considered his one true love. The ambition of art did not always influence his thinking and ideals until later in his teenage years. The challenges and mental boundaries he experiences can contribute to the artist he wants to become, therefore making him very open minded artist with traditional Irish roots.

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus defines beauty and the artist's comprehension of his/her own art. Stephen uses his esthetic theory with theories borrowed from St. Thomas Aquinas and Plato. The discourse can be broken down into three main sections: 1) A definitions of beauty and art. 2) The apprehension and qualifications of beauty. 3) The artist's view of his/her own work. I will explain how the first two sections of his esthetic theory relate to Stephen. Furthermore, I will argue that in the last section, Joyce is speaking of Stephen Dedalus and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as his art.