Michael Rehardt / Songlines (18954)

Michael Rehardt is a Gold Coast-based Indigenous artist. He likes to work with acrylic on canvas to create large dotted aboriginal paintings that captivate you with colour, imagination and beauty.

His other great artistic love is graphite portraits. This may seem an unlikely combination, but Michaels’s acute eye for detail does both so well. Michael resigned from his corporate career in early 2021 to pursue his passion and love of the arts. His days are now spent painting his indigenous stories or recording music as a solo acoustic singer-songwriter.

Michael’s interest in dot painting was inspired by his mother, Leonie Rehardt, an indigenous artist. She taught Michael her unique style, this becoming the platform for his own style. Michael uses culturally-based techniques to create true Dreamtime stories using his experiences and familial history.

Michael was born off country in Launceston, Tasmania and has strong ties to the Palawa people. His ancestral mob is the Boonwurrung River people of the Port Phillip area within the Kulin Nation of South-East Victoria.

Songlines are Dreaming Tracks walked by our animal moieties and creator-beings. They show the path taken in creating the lands, waterways and even the skies above. This piece depicts the songlines mixed with the colours of all the different elements in nature, from deserts to skies to forests to waters. The colours are also a symbol of my colourful culture, and these songlines are passed down through generations of Dreamtime stories, artworks, dances and songs. They are sacred.