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Billy Benn
Perrurle
Photo Mwerre Anthurre Artists |
Billy paints
primarily his father's country. His images are found from memory
and feeling, by painting his land Bill brings the country into
himself. He plans to paint every hill from his country and then
he will stop, then he will return home.
Bill's paintings cover a wide scope of style, born of his own
lack of preciousness, his vivid imagination and colour, texture
and material experimentation strategies - rather than the study
of other painterly influences. One sees hints of Turner, Cezzane,
Van Gogh and the Orientalists within his work, yet these were
images never seen by Bill. We are reminded of these other great
painters in the variations of light that he captures, rolling
ranges painted in deep reds, reminding viewers of the raging
seas Turner exposed. From the Central Australian context, they
remind one of the great inland sea which once existed here. Yet
Bill remarks only on Albert Namatjira being a great painter.
Bill's paintings communicate a well informed knowledge and
relationship of the space that exists in this country. Belgian
Art Historian, Georges Petitjean, was excited by Bill's breadth
and continuance of horizon, never curving at the edges but
continuing their travel overland and on into the distance.
In 2006 Billy Benn was awarded, in front of a cheering crowd,
the biannual Alice Prize with his work Artetyerre (currently in
the collection of the Araluen Arts Centre in Alice Springs).
Text Mwerre
Anthurre Artists
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