The colours of the aboriginal drawings are the basic colours of the earth: red, black and green, but not the blue. Not the same as the modern experiments. Although I must admit that I have seen some fantastic works where the authors blended and mixed up different colours, not only the traditional ones. The paper is the basis of artwork - the linen. The pencil is a kind of finger, with which people used to draw into the clay (or soil). The final product is like a book, where all is being recorded. The Aborigines draw symbols instead of writing in a script. Nobody paints ‘landscapes’ here and each artist has their own style. A circle in the Aboriginal language is guby (pronounced as “gaby”) and it may carry different meanings: it can stand for water, but also it can mean a camping place, Alice Springs, the Czech Republic or any other place. People did not use to carry water with them and they followed this sign to find water wherever they went. One symbol can have various different meanings. The circle is a very common symbol in our drawings. It can also stand for fire. Straight lines connecting several circles mean wandering from place to place. Footsteps or footprints (which you can draw into the sand with one side of your palm and complete it with your fingers) stand for a person. A woman’s symbol has a line next to these footsteps, which symbolizes the digging stick, and some sort of bag to carry things in. The bag looks like an oval. Man the hunter is usually depicted with a spear and with a boomerang. Two U-shaped symbols, one in the other, mean ‘grandmother with her granddaughter, or grandfather with his grandson. The Aboriginal parents in their productive years are busy hunting (men) or gathering food (women), therefore it is the grandparents who take care of the small children most of the time. The elderly and the elders know more, therefore they hand down their knowledge to their grandchildren. I’ll draw a few more symbols for you: this is a dingo drinking water, a sitting emu while drinking, this is a sitting kangaroo, and this is a jumping one. A poisonous snake is a larger “S” because its movements are more ‘pronounced’. You need to be endowed with some imagination to read and distinguish our symbols. The objects are drawn from the bird’s eye view, as they can be seen from the sky. The artists usually tell a story with their paintings.
98 Ukázka elektronické knihy, UID: KOS186425