DAPHNE DE JERSEY | 'Fighting Ground Swamp' | Painting | Acrylic On Linen

"My paintings are inspired by the stories my mother and grandmother had told me over the years. It wasn’t until I moved to live in my Mother’s birthplace Mapoon that the stories my Grandmother had told me as a young girl started to open my eyes to the life she had lived here with her family. My Grandmother was a stolen generation women and has since passed away. My mother who is also an artist started to remember a lot of language names for animals, bush food, medicine which I use in my paintings.

My paintings are usually about places my grandmother would go to collect clap shells to make traditional necklaces and bush fruit and medicine she and her family would use to help her to heal her children and family. Language and Traditional customs were forbidden; only a few Traditional crafts were allowed one being Traditional necklace making which my mother Zoe de Jersey is the only remaining person who makes these in our community.

Using language names in my painting is a way to keep this last bit of culture alive." Daphne De Jersey

DAPHNE DE JERSEY | 'Fighting Ground Swamp' | 2015 | Painting / Acrylic on linen | 76 x 61 cm