Timeline

‘Watson is a master of invention and arguably, the outstanding painter of the Western Desert ....Each painting tells a specific story, but the most impressive feature is the artist's use of colour.... Like Matisse, Watson knows that one may have warm and cool shades of red, warm and cool shades of blue. But he knows this instinctively, without any formal training. What he knows cannot be verbalised, and cannot be taught, yet no one could see these paintings and not be convinced of their profundity.’

John McDonald, Art Critic, Sydney Morning Herald

Yannima Tommy Watson is a senior Pitjantjatjara man from Australia’s central western desert who has become a significant contemporary Indigenous Australian artist. He was born circa 1935 near the tiny isolated community of Irrunytju in Western Australia , near the junction of its border with the Northern Territory and South Australia, in one of the country’s most remote desert regions.

Watson began painting in 2002 following the establishment of the Irrunytju community art centre in 2001, of which Watson was a founding member, and has since then sprung to prominence both nationally and internationally. In 2003, Watson was one of eight Indigenous artists, who collaborated on a commission to provide works that decorate one of the Musée du quai Branly's four buildings in Paris completed in 2006.

His artistic career began with paintings inspired by his ancient Dreamings. Each, while a powerful statement of title to land, is distinguished by a stunning colourful abstraction where the celebration of country and his relation to it is generated using bright layers of thickly applied acrylic paint. These are densely dotted in painterly or linear application. Importantly, no iconographic form or colour that might give insight into ritual knowledge is used. Instead, the titles of his paintings describe place names or encounters of personal and private significance. These include sites in his red desert homelands.

Parallels in Watson’s position as a pioneer of a new art practice can be made with the artist Wassily Kandinsky who like Watson, created a brilliant abstraction of his own inspiration. Both chose a language that went beyond the accepted art forms of the mainstream art expression of their times, Kandinsky in rejecting the limitations of realism and Watson in rejecting the restrictions associated with using the iconographic symbols of indigenous art practice.

In fact, although Watson worked closely with some renowned desert artists of the 1970s and 1980s who painted their stories, largely with indigenous symbols, as a record for the younger generation, Watson shied away from traditional sacred images, because he, like many others, believed his predecessors died prematurely because they allowed non-Aboriginals to see these symbols.

From a perceptual standpoint, Watson’s colour is described as ‘incandescent’ by Judith Ryan, Indigenous Curator at the National Gallery of Victoria. It is applied with dramatic as well as subtle impact in various combinations and tones. Parallels in Watson's work can also be seen with that of Paul Klee, who like Watson, takes a line for a walk for metaphysical reasons.

Watson holds the Australian record for the highest auction price paid for a living indigenous artist.