Jim "Boongar" Edwards
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was born in Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission (plm. 250 km west of Brisbane) in 1942. He is a descendant of the Wakka Wakka through his father and Kabi Kabi tribes (Sunshine Coast,), through his mother.
Jim learnt to paint as a young boy , watching his uncle"Nubla" Cobbo painting boomerangs, and went cutting timber for the boomerangs with his uncle "Dream" and gave him a hand to paint the boomerangs. He worked in the cattle yard and dairy farm and went ringbarking around the area of Cherbourg, his tribal Wakka Wakka lands. His uncles took him hunting kangaroos, porcupine and goanna. |
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Jim who was named "Boonga" after his late father Jim"Boonga" Edwards (also called "Gentleman JIm") who taught him boxing, and Jim won 2 professional titles and travelled around Australia with the boxing tent.Jim learnt about his culture from his father, uncles and Granny Elsie Edwards, who took him bush and showed him "Bush tucker". His great-great-grandfather Willie Mc Kenzie ("Geerbau", honey-bee), a storyteller used to come to Cherbourg and tell Dreamtime stories to the kids. |
Jims painting career started in jail (8 years in Boggoro as a result of fighting for landrights), where he taught himself landscape painting with oils. He painted many landscape and portraits for the jail officers and painted a big mural in Nulkaba Prison Farm. After jail he met his Dutch wife Margaret (1983). She organized several exhibitions, in Brisbane and in Holland. In 1987 Jim and Margaret went to Cairns, making and selling aboriginal arts and crafts and doing boomerang demonstrations.Started their company "Boongar Arts & Crafts P/L" in 1987 and opened up Boongar Art Gallery , in Kuranda, in 1991. |
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Jim sells and his handcrafted boomerangs, didjeridus and paintings to local, interstate and overseas visitors in his workshop/gallery.You can come and watch him painting his work and get a phot and signed work of art! Jims work reflects his vast knowledge and love of his tribal lands, his culture and his people.Initially he painted pure landscapes, catching the unique colouring and atmosphere of his native land in oil colours, and was immediately compared to the great aboriginal landscape painter Albert Namatjira. |
Over the years he started adding figures, re-enacting the stories and legends that Jim knows, with the landscape fading into the background.. Jim started to paint his memories of his childhood, the people that he knew who still had their traditional culture.telling their stories, remembering also the Gundir men, who had special powers and were much feared. Apart from painting stories from his Wakka and Kabi tribal heritage, which has been described as "an appealing mix of indigenous history and European media*, Jim also paints totemic legends in the so-called dotstyle. Jims son Brian "Winjela" born in Cherbourg in 1966 has also been painting for a long time, over 20 years. |
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He has a very different style from his father, he lovers using bright colours and is a master at blending colours. Brian has developed into a brillante artist, and paints canvasses and dijeridus together with his father. At the moment father and son are working together on an exhibition of Wakka and Kabi stories and legends, making some collaborative paintings and some solo-paintings. |
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