CRAIG CHARLES is a Melbourne-based painter with Yorta Yorta heritage
on his father’s side, and Mhutti Mhutti heritage on his mother’s side. Born in 1975 in Mildura,
in Latje Latje country, Charles was raised by his great grandparents, Betty Charles, a descendant
of the Djara people, and Ron Murray, a descendant of the Wamba Wamba/Lake Boga people. Creativity
was part of his life from an early age. He remembers listening to stories and drawing with Betty
and his siblings at the kitchen table from the age of four.
His formal training in art began in 1996, first at the Sunraysia TAFE in Mildura, and then at the
Mildura Campus of La Trobe University, where Charles completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1998.
As Charles has written in his masters thesis exegesis, a turning point came when an art lecturer
“told me about my ability to raise awareness of the 'Koori’ plight, through art” (Charles, 2006:12).
Since then Charles’ art practice has been concerned with celebrating Aboriginal people’s resilience,
paying tribute to family, ancestors and country, and sharing experiences and stories with wider society.
Having lost a number of family members and friends from the Victorian Koori community over the years,
creativity of all forms has become a means to draw strength and to heal: the artist describes it as
“an amazing form of medicine” (Charles, 2006:8).
In 2006 Charles completed a Masters of Fine Arts at RMIT University in Melbourne, during which he
pursued these themes and developed technical approaches to articulating them in his work. He has
come to draw on a range of artist and natural materials in his paintings for symbolic purposes. For
example, gold leaf is frequently employed, as it signifies his respect for his elders and traditional
owners. Gold leaf also allows Charles to glorify the country he depicts, such as the Murray River that
runs through Latje Latje country, with which he identifies very strongly. The artist has also rubbed his
canvases in the earth “to appreciate the physical connection between the image and the land” (Charles, 2006:17),
and he uses shellac and oil to bind the dust and grains to the work. Other natural materials such as ochres and
charcoal also add texture to his paintings. Charles’ works are recognisable for their dramatic figurative and
animal forms and their layered, scraped and glossy surfaces. They are often characterised by a well-defined
figure/ground relationship, in which negative space forms a bold, semi-abstract component. In a number of works,
Bett’s kitchen tablecloth, symbolised by printed decorative patterning, provides a subtle background.
Charles began exhibiting in significant group exhibitions from the mid-1990s, including the National Gallery of
Victoria’s “Big Shots Exhibition – We-Iri-We-Homeborn” (1996), the “Art of Place” National Indigenous Heritage
Awards exhibitions at Canberra’s Old Parliament House in 1996, 1998 (where he was highly commended in the
Emerging Artist section) and 2000, and the touring exhibition “Native Title Business: Contemporary Aboriginal Art” (2002).
