Burning in the colour by David Paulson

Rosella Namok grew up in the remote coastal community of Lockhart River. She is one of Australia’s best known Indigenous artists working across painting, screen printing and more recently sculpture.

“Her distinctive linear imagery is derived through a technique developed from watching her grandmother draw in the sand. She recounts these patterns by pulling her fingers through multiple layers of wet and dry paint. Fire and molten bronze now transpose Rosella’s paintings into distinctive, and culturally iconic forms.”

In this portrait Namok is at work in a Brisbane foundry – a very different environment to her traditional homeland. With leather gloves on she uses a blow torch to apply patina to one of her bronze sculptures. Namok intensely concentrates on the task at hand as the flames take hold.

The portrait captures a critical moment: the translation between Namok’s two and three dimensional artforms, and how these complex processes and intuitive moments are central to the work of the artist, David Paulson.

Namok’s artwork brings a modern sensibility and outlook to traditional themes across cultural and social concerns, with candid observations about changing lifestyles for First Nations people.For over two decades she has exhibited across Australia and internationally and her work is held in many major public collections. Both Namok and Paulson are represented by FireWorks Gallery in Brisbane.