Robert Ambrose Cole (1959-1994)

‘I was born in Alice Springs. I paint my mother’s and my father’s country. My mother’s country is Banka Banka, Warramunga people, north of Tennant Creek. Most of my paintings are from around Aputula, Finke, my father’s country. His country is south of Alice Springs, the sand hills on the edge of the Simpson Desert … My images come from all over the place.’

Robert Ambrose Cole was a self-taught artist who lived and worked in Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Cole’s style of painting was influenced by his years growing up in an urban centre, exposed to the art movements of the Central and Western Deserts. He experimented with both acrylic dot painting and the European-influenced landscapes of the Hermannsburg water-colourists, whose proponents included Albert Namatjira and Otto Pareroultja. While Cole maintained both forms of practice, their synthesis led to his shimmering white dot paintings, in which figures and shapes emerge. These works combine a translucency and subtlety, influenced by the watercolours, with Cole’s obvious stylistic affinity with dot painting.