Jimmy  Midjawmidjaw Crocker Island Bark Painter

Style

Jimmy Midjawmidjawaw is one of the old school artists whose works have a flow to the limbs that has nothing to do with where the joints are. His barks have a great fluidity and lack European convention. Some of his paintings are directly related with sorcery. Sorcery, in this case, is traditional beliefs disliked by Christian missionaries. He belonged to a generation of aboriginal artists who knew their art had a direct magical effect in the real world. Jimmy Midjawmidjaw had two very distinct phases of bark painting. His early works were mainly for anthropologists and are extremely traditional. They have strong fields of color; bold outlining in white pigment and animated forms. These early works are very similar to early works by Paddy Compass Namatbara. The faces on his early bark paintings of spirits look more animal than human.

Some early bark paintings by Irrwala can look very similar to those by Jimmy.

Biography

Very little information is available on this artist. Jimmy was born in Minjilang on Crocker Island around 1897 and died in 1985. He spoke Kuninjku, language. If anyone knows more information about the life of Jimmy I would love to hear from them. I would be more than happy to add it to this article

Midjawmidjaw is sometimes referred to as Mijaumijau or Mijau Mijau

Jimmy Midjawmidjaw Bark painting Images

The following are images are not a complete list of works by the artist but give a good idea of the style and variety of the artist.