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Artist or Maker: ROVER (JOOLAMA) THOMAS (CIRCA 1926-1998)

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Provenance: Painted at Warmun (Turkey Creek), Western Australia
Aquired directly from the artist by George Rendall Gothe and thence by descent
Private collection, Melbourne

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Notes: Mr Gothe was a friend of Mr P Barry who occasionally employed Rover Thomas to work on fencing at the Argyle Diamond Mine.

With its bold diagonal bands intersecting mid canvas Roads Cross is a fine example of the reduced imagery, which distinguishes Rover Thomas's most striking paintings.

Roads Cross was also the title of Thomas's solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in 1994. That exhibition showed a similar work titled Roads Meeting, 1987. In it Thomas identified the brown sections as gravel roads and the deeper hued lines those of bitumen. (See: T Akerman Roads Cross - The painting of Rover Thomas, Canberra, 1994)

It is a simple story yet reveals much about Thomas's extraordinary life which provided the wellspring of many of his paintings. As a much-travelled stockman, for more than 30 years Thomas travelled many such roads over vast territories throughout the Kimberley, Northern Territory, South and Western Australia. A vibrant storyteller, when he came to painting in the early 1980s Thomas drew on memories of those journeys for many works as well as those based on creation stories and more modern events such as massacres, cyclones and floods.

Spatial relationships are a key factor in the power of Thomas's art. Of special potency are paintings such as this done in the square format. Often called the 'magic square' in Western art terms, the square has been noted by many artists as being the most pleasing of dimensions if resolved satisfactorily. Thomas often chose this format with the intuition of a natural aesthete.

With its grand sweep of simple imagery and grainy ochres, this is a classic painting.

A 10% Goods and Services tax (G.S.T) will be charged on the Buyer's Premium in all lots in this sale