05/05/2019
This Stunning Painting is by the Incredible Tarisse King, titled “Blue Salts”
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Taking great inspiration from her travels between Darwin and Adelaide, a straight dissection through the Australian landscape, Tarisse paints the surreal and changing panorama of the salt lakes.
The intense blues in this series mirror the colours on a clear day over the salt lakes and Tarisse then overlays the blue tones with soft metallic silver and pearl dots to mimic the salt crystals that crust upon the land. The clusters and lines she paints them in replicate the patterns blown into the salts by the incessant winds over the flat salt lake country.
These paintings emit an ambience of purity and beauty in finding such unique splendour in the seemingly simplest of landforms.
Tarisse has a truly incredible capacity to blend the ancient with the new to produce artworks that tell her ancestor’s history in a contemporary style.
Focused to represent the country around Katherine in Australia’s Northern Territory where her ancestors, the Gurindji tribe have journeyed and lived for generations.
She depicts her local country’s formations such as tracks, billabongs, rivers, lakes, rock holes, shelters, and food sources.
Drawing on the teachings of her influential father, Tarisse recalls the philosophy he taught her – that everything in life is circular.
There is no beginning and no end. Unlike her sister Sarrita who paints the same theme in thick textured paint, Tarisse uses thin, flat paint sticking within the tonal variations of one, two or three colours.
She creates a refined and sophisticated look and the colours she uses to construct a modern design. The repetition of the circle across the canvas refers to her father’s philosophy but is completed with such preciseness that it aesthetically resembles the accuracy of a print.
She portrays land structures such as rivers, billabongs, shelters, tracks, rock holes, and food supplies/bush tucker. Through her painting, she shows us how her ancestors lived and survived on the land. Tarisse uses traditional Aboriginal symbols to represent her people and the landscape.
Tarisse paints traditional Aboriginal iconography in razor-sharp, strong white lines, circles, arches and dots to create a bold artwork that has a base in the modern art blended skilfully with the traditional. Songlines where ancestors once trekked sequence across the canvas in various directions. The spaces created by this are filled with concentric circles representing different family populaces, symbols for bush tucker, water sources and shelter.
Her striking technique has a contemporary feel, indicative of Tarisse’s talent to make the ancient appear modern.
Tarisse King was born in Adelaide, South Australia on the 4th September 1986. She is the older sister to fellow artist, Sarrita King and daughter to the late, famous artist, William King Jungala (1966 – 2007).
Tarisse inherits her Australian Aboriginality from her father who was part of the Gurindji tribe from the Northern Territory. The Gurindji tribe came to public attention during the 1960s and 1970s when members employed by the Wave Hill cattle station led a landmark case which became the first successful land rights claim in Australia. Like her forefathers, Tarisse is an assertive individual who is determined to communicate the inseparable connection she and her ancestors have with the Australian land.
Tarisse spent most of her youth in Darwin, a unique city in northern Australia that is subject to extreme weather conditions; from torrential rain and cyclones in the Wet Season to oppressive and immobilising heat in the Dry Season. This climatic impact is seen in her artwork, but it was also the road trips she travelled between Darwin, Katherine and Adelaide, where her father resided, that she reflects on most in her paintings. The journey of 3027 kilometers, right through the heart of Australia, reveals extreme expanses of varying landscapes and provided Tarisse with the isolation and time to develop a unique perception of the land which can be seen in her paintings such as Pink Salts and My Country – Tracks and Rivers.
Moving to Adelaide at the age of 16, it was her involvement with her father’s art that lead Tarisse to experiment with her own designs and techniques, resulting in a definable style of her own. Drawing on the Central and Western Desert Aboriginal dotting style of painting the land topographically, Tarisse captures a complex and varied soul of the land.
In homage to her father, her adaptation of Earth Images defines Australia as if looking from outer space back to land; the viewer is given a heightened feeling of drifting above the earth. Then, in her series, My Country Tarisse composes 40,000-year-old Aboriginal iconography of songlines, dots and circles to create a bold and contemporary aesthetic and provides yet another more detailed perspective on the landscape. Finally, Pink Salts, lowers the viewer back down to earth and immerses one in the surreal and luminous pink sunsets over the great salt lakes in the centre of Australia. In all Tarisse’s artworks, she contemporises the ancient and allows the present-day viewer an accessible moment to consider the past.
Tarisse now lives in New Zealand and paints in her home studio while looking after her 3 little daughters. At the age of 33, she is a full-time artist. She has been included in over 20 exhibitions, is represented in galleries in every Australian state, included in many high profile Australian and international art collections and been auctioned successfully through Paris’ Art Curial. With so many accolades to her name at such a young age, Tarisse’s potential to build on an already outstanding career is more than promising.
