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Tapper, Nick; Mossenson, Diane; Pickett, Violet (Hg.): Shane Pickett Meeyakba, Mossenson Art Foundation, Coolbinia 2017, ISBN 9780980400953

Table of Contents        ¦         Cover Text        ¦         Review⁄Abstract

Table of Contents

Dan Mossenson: From the Publisher -6-

Violet Pickett: Foreword -7-

Shane Pickett: I'm on a Path That's a Healing Path -8-

Nick Tapper: Introduction: There Is a Season -12-

When He Told the Stories, I Can See the Country -24-

Anna Haebich: Shane Pickett, Nyoongar Artist -54-

Diane Mossenson: Beyond the Horizon: A Journey of Collaboration -64-

Ian McLean: Dreaming Painting: Shane Pickett's Gift -78-

Henry F. Skerritt: Just Weather: The Art and Philosophy of Shane Pickett -84-

Shane Pickett: Works 1976-2009 -101-

Artist Biography -229-

Acknowledgements -238-

Author Biographies -239-

Cover Text

'I am Meeyakba Shane Pickett, a painter of the Nyoongar lands. I am priviledged to have been taught the traditions and cultural values of my father's Jdewat people and also my mother's Balladong people. These include hunting skills and reading of weather patterns and signs that teach me to respect the seasons and understand their movements, changes and moods. I have learnt to read the songlines that journey through all living things across the entire landscape. I have sat down and watched the dusk infusion (the changing of day into night) and seen the colours of the sky and shadows move or merge into dreams of soft calming rhythms. I will always respect my cultural values, for the dreams do flow strongly through the views of my life. Every river, every tree, every rock is important, as the Dreaming runs through them connecting all things, including mankind. These are the energy paths of the Dreaming and they are never meant to be broken, never meant ot fail. When they are broken by mankind's negative effects on the land, the energy paths can never be repaired.' The paintings of Shane Pickett show the transformations of Nyoongar country, the country of Australia's South-West, in breathtaking and ever-changing images. Shane Pickett (1957-2010) grew up in a small Aboriginal mission in the Wheatbelt agricultural region east of Perth. From an early age Pickett suffered from ill health, but showed an immediate aptitude for drawing and painting. He held his first exhibition in Perth in 1976, at the age of 19. Over a three-decade career, Pickett's work transformed from detailed landscape paintings reminiscent of Albert Namatjira into a groundbreaking and expressive form of gestural abstraction. He developed a new visual language to represent the cornerstones of Nyoongar culture: the pathways of ancestors, traditional healing practices and places, and especially the six Nyoongar seasons. He would sometimes describe his paintings as 'windows into the Dreaming', and the strength of his culture is delivered all through his work with brilliant, lyrical intensity. Exploring not only physical healing but also healing of environmental destruction and the wounds of colonisation, his paintings show the persistence of Nyoongar ways of seeing the country. His Nyoongar name, Meeyakba, or 'soft light of the moon', captures the gentle spirit of an artist who set a beacon for those who follow him. He is remembered as the preeminent Nyoongar artist of his time and one of the great painters of the Western Australian landscape.