“I was born in QLD. My father is Githabul. His father, my grandfather came from Woodenbong. That’s why I have come back to this area. I returned in 1995 to honour my fathers country, my country.
I had entered into the arts arena doing Indigenous designs because it keeps coming to me. I went off and got two degrees, A Bachelor of Fine Arts and an Honours in the Fine Arts. Anybody who knows me knows that I paint and I have been painting forever. I paint all the things I keep seeing all the time and it’s all about the land. It’s all about instances of the Bundjalung dreaming.
This place is just magnificent and a wealth of knowledge comes through the elders, through the people that live here and through local Indigenous people and just the land itself. It’s stunning! I’m on a journey of colour and culture. The more I learn about this land, the more I learn about myself.
This mural I am working on now is an expression of interest the Lismore Regional Gallery put out wanting an artists impression of Lismore. The waterfall that will turn up in this work is Whian Whian Falls which is the first place an elder took me when I first came here. He also said to me ‘If you drink the water here you will keep coming back’ and I drank the water obviously. That’s why that’s turned up in this image. It reminds me of my entry point here but it’s also my interpretation of how I see Lismore.
We are at the bottom of the basin. All the river systems meet here. It’s forever green. You look out into the hills and the ranges and you look out into the Indigenous sky, The Star Nation, with markings that come from this land. The Scare (pronounced scar) trees in the foreground acknowledge the past. The indigenous past that occupied this land and the Scare trees marked ceremony sites such as mens business, womens business and burial grounds. You will still find a few of them around. I’ve also used red ochre, yellow ochre, black and white which were the traditional colours being the earth colours and of course the ever green.
I wanted to invoke harmony and peace and also the Spirit Mother we all share while we live in this beautiful place. The water hole represents a communal place which is what I see the Gallery as. It all joins everything together as a meeting place for all of us.”
(Footnote – I will head downtown and photograph the finished mural when Luke’s done. It’s looking amazing 
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