Mount Giles 1938

Albert Namatjira captured Mount Giles with watercolors, probably right there on the spot. I can imagine him, squinting into the sun, mixing colors, trying to capture the light as it dances on the mountainside. Look at the way he's built up the forms with delicate washes, layer upon layer. The blues and greens feel so true to the Australian landscape, that vastness and subtlety all at once. It's not just a picture of a mountain, it's a feeling, an experience. I wonder what it was like for him, an Aboriginal artist, to be painting in this style, which is so Western? Was he trying to bridge two worlds, or just paint what he saw, how he saw it? Maybe it wasn't a matter of one or the other. For Namatjira, just like many of us, painting could be a form of exploration, where the act of putting brush to paper becomes a way of understanding and connecting with the world.