Nyaparu (William) Gardiner (dec.)

‘Some of these paintings that I illustrate is just to show that that’s how we used to live, mostly around this Pilbara area to Marble Bar. I like to draw this sort of things… I’m learning my grandchildren to understand old sort of things like this, and my children they already know.’

‘My name is William Gardiner, and this is my life story that I’m telling you. Some of these paintings that I illustrate is just to show that that’s how we used to live, mostly around this Pilbara area to Marble Bar. I like to draw this sort of things… I’m learning my grandchildren to understand old sort of things like this, and my children they already know.’

I started drawing when I was a young man in Port Hedland, out in Two Mile. I had seen a couple of old people do drawing. ‘I like these things’ I would say to myself. I used to come near them and I would see how they do all this, and they were very smart. I found it interesting. I learned to draw from comic books. Later I worked with the Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre mob. I wrote a few [books] and I was doing a bit of art for the Aboriginal people. I was painting what stories they was telling me. My inspiration for the book was that I seen a movie of that person, [Albert] Namatjira, but I didn’t know him terribly [well]. I seen the picture in a movie of him, what he made, and I was thinking about what I could do. I was thinking about painting, that I can do it. I had a few idea on how to mix the colours and so on and I learn more bits and pieces and put it together, you know, in my mind. Things like what colours and what kind of hills and what colours to mix. The hard part of painting is how to mix the colours to picture what kind of picture, the evening or the light in the morning, or midday or something. Some of my favourite colours are here now: red, blue, white, brown, black and green. These are the colours that I use now.

I got my own style now, you could say that. It’s all from my memory, these old people and the Country. This thing here inside your head is where you work things out. You see that thing and you do that thing!’

 Nyaparu (William) Gardiner (dec.) was an artist, storyteller and language worker. For several years he recorded and wrote Nyangumarta language and stories. Nyaparu painted about his childhood in the 1940s before the Pilbara Aboriginal strike of 1946, and his work on pastoral stations throughout the Pilbara and the Kimberley.  For the last few years of his life, Nyaparu lived in Port Hedland, his childhood home. 

Language group: Nyangumarta