FREDDIE TIMMS - MOONLIGHT VALLEY
FREDDIE TIMMS
MOONLIGHT VALLEY, 2006
151 x 201 cm
natural earth pigments on canvas
REGION
Kimberley, WA
PROVENANCE
Artlandish, WA
Private Collection, NSW
Cooee Art Leven, NSW
STORY
Freddie Timms began painting in 1986, inspired by the elder artists already painting at Frog Hollow, a small outstation attached to the community at Warmun, Turkey Creek. Born at Police Hole circa 1946, he followed in his father’s footsteps to the stockman life at Lissadell Station. At the age of twenty, he set out to explore and work on other stations. It was during this time that he met and worked alongside Rover Thomas who was to have a lasting influence on him. In 1985, he left Lissadell once more to settle at the new community established at Warmun, while working as a gardener at the nearby Argyle Mine.
In a career that spanned more than 20 years, Freddy Timms became known for aerial map-like visions of country that are less concerned with ancestral associations than with tracing the responses and refuges of the Gija people as they encountered the ruthlessness and brutality of colonisation. The political nature of his work is characterised by the intimate interpretations of the experiences of his people. Freddie Timms is foremost amongst those Gija artists of the second generation. His was a unique Gija perspective on the history of white interaction with his people. It is hard to think of another artist who expressed more poignantly through their art the sense of longing and the abiding loss that comes from the forced separation from the land, one’s spiritual home.
ARTIST PROFILE
