Eddie Blitner / Mimi Spirit and Brolgas (EB785)

Edward (Eddie) Blitner was born in Katherine, Northern Territory, in 1961. His bush name is Taiita. He is a Marra and Alawa man with connections to Naiyalrindji Country and Ngukurr on the Roper River in south-east Arnhem Land. Ngukurr is home to people from several clans and language groups who are collectively known as Yugul Mangi.

Eddie spent part of his early life at Ngukurr before attending Concordia College in Adelaide, where he remained until the age of sixteen. After returning to the Northern Territory, he worked as a stockman and general hand on Victoria River Downs. Over the years, he has also lived and worked throughout the Katherine, Victoria River and East Kimberley regions.

Eddie began learning to paint and carve when he was around seven years old. His grandfathers Fred, Gerry and Donald were artists and carvers who worked with natural ochres on bark and wood. Eddie recalls:

“My grandfathers, Fred, Gerry and Donald, would be painting or carving, and we kids would sit around them and watch them grind the ochres and mix the colours. After a while they would tell us the story for that particular painting and also teach us the songs and dances for that story. When they were in a very good mood, they let us paint the sides of the bark painting. That was my start.”

Through his grandfathers and other senior family members, Eddie learnt about painting, carving, ceremony and the cultural stories connected with his Country. Members of his Barbil clan also taught him traditional skills, including making flint spearheads and hunting boomerangs, fishing, hunting, finding bush foods and preparing bush medicines.

Eddie has continued to share his painting, carving and cultural knowledge with children and younger people, carrying forward the tradition of learning from family and Elders that shaped his own early years.

Alongside his painting practice, Eddie is an accomplished woodcarver and yidaki (didgeridoo) maker. He has created detailed carvings of birds and other animals, including large bird sculptures decorated with finely painted cross-hatched designs.

Eddie’s paintings draw upon the visual traditions and subject matter of southern Arnhem Land. He is particularly recognised for his precise use of rarrk, the fine cross-hatching that gives his figures pattern, movement and depth. Working primarily with ochre-inspired reds, yellows, browns, black and white, he combines traditional techniques with his own distinctive arrangements of overlapping and interconnected forms.

His best-known subjects include Mimi spirit figures, Rainbow Serpents and the abundant wildlife of the Roper River and its freshwater billabongs. Brolgas, magpie geese, barramundi, turtles, crocodiles, goannas, kangaroos and water plants frequently appear throughout his work. Animals are sometimes represented in an X-ray style, revealing their internal structures and reflecting Eddie’s intimate knowledge of the creatures and environments of his Country.

Eddie also paints men’s hunting and fishing scenes, corroboree and ceremonial subjects, bush tucker and ancestral stories. His compositions are often complex and highly animated, with figures moving through and around one another rather than appearing as separate, static images.

Through his distinctive use of rarrk and carefully layered imagery, Eddie continues the stories and artistic knowledge passed down by his family and Elders while creating a contemporary body of work that is immediately recognisable as his own.

AWARDS
• 1999 First Prize, Barunga Aboriginal Cultural Festival
• 1998 Finalist, 15th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Darwin NT

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
• 2023 Artists of the North Country: Arnhem Land and Beyond, Mitchell Fine Art, Brisbane QLD
• 2018 Edward Blitner: Freshwater Billabongs, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
• 2017 Making a Splash: Mermaids and Modernity, Macquarie University Art Gallery, Sydney NSW
• 2012 Edward Blitner: Stories from my Grandfather, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
• 2009 Rock Spirits, Central Art, Alice Springs NT
• 2000 Love Magic, Sydney NSW
• 1999 Spirits of the Dreaming, Darling Harbour, Sydney NSW
• 1998 15th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Darwin NT

Mimis are the tiny, match-thin spirits which Aborigines believe have lived in the escarpments since the beginning of time, and are still living there today.

In the Dreamtime they taught many skills, including hunting, weaving, fishing, painting on rock and on bark, ceremonial songs and dances to old medicine men (marrkidjbu), who in turn passed their knowledge on to the elders of the tribe so that they could teach other chosen men.

Without a written language, painting was the only way in which the history and religion of the tribe could be passed down, thereby ensuring that future generations would know of the deeds of the Ancestral Beings who walked the earth in the beginning of time.

Mimis are so shy that they hide within huge boulders all day long and only come out at night by blowing holes in the rocks and emerging with their weapons and pets – goannas, bandicoots, echidnas, crocodiles, kangaroos, rock wallabies, barramundi, turtles, butterflies, fish, birds, turtles, brolgas and small rock pythons (to mention just a few) which live in the rocks and waterways with them.

The only time they really get angry is when an intruder kills or injures one of their pets. They are not against any other of these species being killed for food, but they become extremely upset if one of their own pets is harmed.

All night long the Mimis hunt and fish and hold ceremonies, then at dawn they go back into their homes and pull the rock doors shut after them. Aborigines respect the wishes of Mimi Spirits to have complete privacy, and are careful to stay well away from the escarpments at night.