Charlie Egalie Tjapaltjarri

An artist specializing in the Aboriginal Art tradition, Charlie Egalie Tjapaltjarri creates visually reverberating canvases depicting Bushfire folklore and dreamscapes using the language of colour and graphic motifs rooted in a rich tribal heritage. A vocabulary of vibrant tones and sacred tribal symbology composed with striking visual rhythm inscribes narratives of spiritual elevation set in the desert sandhills and spinifex country; waterholes and the notion of tracks and journeys feature greatly in his work. Vivid, saturated colours layered concentrically and densely dotted backgrounds suggest the desert topology of Aboriginal land. Simultaneously abstract and descriptive, Tjapaltjarri’s animated paintings galvanize both the cursory and inquisitive viewer.

Born in Victoria, Australia circa 1940, Tjapaltjarri is an aboriginal artist who commenced his career in emergence of the art movement at Papunya in the early 1970s. Tjapaltjarri has exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; his prolific oeuvre is housed in various public and private collections, including the National Museum of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; South Australian Museum, Adelaide; Holmes a’ Court, Perth; and University of Western Australia Anthropology Museum, Perth.