Hills of Old Texas 1998 bears artist's name, dimensions, year, Waringarri Aboriginal Arts and Tineriba Fine Arts on the reverse natural earth pigments on canvas 91.0 x 122.0cm (35 13/16 x 48 1/16in).
Footnotes
PROVENANCE Waringarri Aboriginal Arts, Kununurra, Western Australia Private collection
EXHIBITED Written in the Land: Queenie McKenzie, a retrospective exhibition, Coo-ee Aboriginal Art Gallery, 14 March - 18 April 2009, cat. no. 8430
LITERATURE Jennifer J. Field, Written in the Land: The Life of Queenie McKenzie, Melbourne: Melbourne Books, 2008, p. 11 (illus.)
Born at Texas Downs Station, McKenzie painted this country throughout her artistic career. Hills of Old Texas is one of her final major works executed in the last year of her life and demonstrates the strong attachment she had to her homeland. McKenzie has compressed the landscape in profile view and framed it with a yellow ochre band - techniques that she employed throughout her career. According to Judith Ryan, she was one of the only artists who used pink and purple ochre which she mined herself and is in evidence in this painting (Judith Ryan, Images of Power: Aboriginal Art from the Kimberley, exh. cat., Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1993, p.43).
