Dibirdibi Country 2008

Sally Gabori painted Dibirdibi Country with what looks like acrylic paint, and a brush, maybe a rag, too, to push the paint around. I can imagine Gabori in the act of painting: the canvas is on the floor, or maybe leaning against a wall, and she's down there, pushing these blocks of red, yellow, purple, and black around. Her marks are big, bold, and intuitive. I love how the colors vibrate against each other. Look how the yellow sings out against the red! And that fat splodge of black, floating in the middle of the canvas, holding its own. She’s figuring out what it means to paint a place, a memory, a feeling. The white is like a memory, hazy and half-erased. I feel the power of someone like Gabori painting a landscape not from observation but from memory and feeling. It is the same energy that inspired painters like Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. It’s like she is speaking a language of colour and gesture all her own. She is in conversation with a history of painting, reinventing it for herself, for her country.