The art that made me: Blak Douglas

Born in 1970 in Western Sydney, to an Aboriginal father of the Dunghutti people and an Irish-Australian mother, self-taught painter Blak Douglas is a four-time Archibald finalist. In 2019 he was awarded the Kilgour Prize for figurative and portrait painting and in 2021 the National Still Life Award.

‘In the early 2000s I ran a lunchtime performance, seven days a week, in the Yiribana Gallery [at the Art Gallery of New South Wales] titled ADAMRIGINAL: didgeridoos & don’ts of urban Aboriginal art. Either side of this incredible opportunity, I had time to immerse myself in a world of fine art.’

A portrait of Douglas, by friend and fellow artist Euan Macleod, is among the 2021 Archibald Prize finalists.

My Uncle had a framed print of this image. I was in awe of it as a child, because I was grappling with the classic Australian faux pas of what constituted a ‘proper’ Aboriginal. My dad was black but because he’d moved to the urban environment from the bush, he was no longer seen as proper. On the other hand, in ethnographic publications, ‘real’ Aborigines were naked and sat in the red earth eating witchetty grubs and kangaroo. But what resonated personally in this remarkable image is the shoeless mob. This I could relate to. Dad had told me that he had to walk barefoot to school in the snow in Batlow, because his mum couldn’t afford to buy him shoes.

Everything in this painting blew my mind. I immediately flashed back to the terror of riding the Big Dipper at Luna Park for the first time. The rollercoaster ride in this scene freaks you out emotionally, graphically, psychologically and tonally. It’s a veritable Coney Island meets Stephen King. I had to read more.

My instant infatuation with Emily became cemented upon learning her age. If she were my great-great-grandmother, I don’t think I would’ve left her side. She was ‘Mother Earth’. And there’s no better ‘self-portrait’ than this piece. Rarely had we seen black dots appear in her landscapes. The way the black dots intersect with the blues and greens embody her Dreaming, her soul and her cosmos. This is a landscape painting of EVERYWHERE.

Light years ahead of any other contemporary Aboriginal dot painters, this piece mesmerised me, because the further back one stands and squints, one can hear the sea breeze. We almost feel we are complicit in the moment of imminent change.