Colin Liddy, Profile
Artist: Colin Liddy, “Moonggon”
Born: 06/02/1970 on a small cattle station behind Pine Creek, a historic gold mining town of about 800 people located about 365 km South of Darwin on the Stewart Highway in the Northern Territory of Australia.
In Pine Creek there is a police station, a school and a modern medical clinic with a visiting Doctor.
There is also an Aboriginal community at Kybrook Farm of about 300 residents just 6 km South of Pine Creek.
He was taken from his parents, brothers and sisters and raised in foster care in the Darwin Arnhem Land region.
He was taught to paint by his uncles in the traditional raark or cross hatching of the Northern Arnhem land artists and developed his special technique while living in Darwin and serving time in Darwin Correction Center.
He still lives in the Darwin region when not traveling visiting his large extended family and paints sporadically producing only two or three paintings per year.
He shows great talent and produces vibrant, interesting studies but he seems to lack the desire to paint regularly.
Like many of our better artists he enjoys too much alcohol which gets him into trouble with the law.
Perhaps when he gets older he will show more interest in painting and less in the other activities which keep taking him out of circulation and away from his painting.
He painted "Googuk Dreaming", over an eleven month period in 1998 while in prison in the ‘Arnhem Land Style’ of his Uncles who were part of the Stolen Generation.
I believe this to be Colin Liddy's finest painting produced so far, but his carrier is yet to come as most Aboriginal Artists do not come into there prim, usually until late in there lives.
(The generation of Aboriginal people taken from their parents for assimilation into the white mans way of doing things through education and work).
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