Christopher Churchill / Dingo Dreaming (6148-CCH-03)

Chris Churchill was born in Derby, Western Australia in 1974 and resides at Warmun Community, Turkey Creek, 200kms south of Kununurra in the East Kimberley region. He is a Jaru (desert) skin man married to Lorraine Daylight, a talented Gija artist from one of the best known First Generation Ochre Artist families. They have six children. Chris works as an independent artist. He often stretches his own canvas and paints from home or in Kununurra in house at Artlandish Aboriginal Art Gallery. He is also a wonderfully gifted carver, one of the few of his contemporaries carrying on this important tradition.

He was fortunate to be taught ochre technique by the late Jack Britten, and this is obvious in Chris’ attention to detail in the basics of ochre blending for the execution of his artworks. However, Christopher is fiercely proud of his own style, albeit grateful to Jack and his other mentors. And like Jack he can sketch, he is a natural, he has all the talent and determination it takes to become a great artist.

He possesses a diversity of content – like the late Rover Thomas he is desert bred but able to also paint his family’s country in the beautiful East Kimberley. In the main, Chris paints in ochre medium, sometimes thick and crusty, in other works much finer. His painting focuses on the land, from Purnululu (Bungle Bungles) to the country between Warmun and Kununurra to the north and Halls Creek to the south. His subject matter is often mapping – he paints roads and landmarks with precision – his style is distinctive and the ochre with which he goes to a great deal of trouble blending contrasts from pale pinks to strong red wine colours.

Everything indicates an incredible future for this artist, he is dedicated and hardworking. In 2007 Chris’ works were included in the first Warmun Art Centre Exhibition to be held in New York at the prestigious Ralph Pucci International Gallery.

Christopher is a talented artist with a great deal to offer the world of Aboriginal Art.

In the Ngarrankarni (Dreaming) a man went hunting with his dogs in Maraninjji country, in the Goomooloo hills. He didn’t look after those dingo dogs – he was wrong because he needed them to help him hunt. He made camp, fed himself, but didn’t give those dogs any water or food. The dogs were very cross and ran away. The next morning, the man went looking for them – he climbed one of the high hills and called and called for them. They wouldn’t come back. He stayed on that hill and turned into stone – some old people say the dingo dogs turned him into stone. He is there today, in the hills in the high mountain country.

Gallery Note – Dingo Dreaming is a well known Dreamtime story of the Gija people. As with many of their stories, the moral is clear and in this particular scenario, it is noted that one must be kind to animals. The alternate names for this depiction are “Man Calling out for His Dogs” or “Devil Dog” and the iconography is representative of the hills in Gija country plus the dog’s paw prints and the man’s footprints.