ROVER JOOLAMA THOMAS, Desert Oaks, 1996

ROVER JOOLAMA THOMAS Gija language, 1926 - 1998 Desert Oaks, 1996 ochre on linen 60 x 90 cm; 63 x 93 cm (framed) signed verso 'RORER'; bears inscription verso: "Desert Oaks", 20.10.96, NAT-0292-RT, 90x60 PROVENANCE Narrangunny Art Traders, Western Australia, Cat No. NAT-0292-RT Private Collection, United States of America Private Collection, New South Wales Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Narrangunny Art Traders Rover Thomas was born around 1926 at Yalda soak, near Kunawarritji (Well 33) on the Canning Stock Route in the Great Sandy Desert. He left the desert around 1950 to work as a stockman on the Kimberley cattle stations and settled at Warmun (Turkey Creek) in 1975, where he became a central figure in the East Kimberley painting movement. Working in ground ochres, he reduced landscape to shapes outlined in white dots and made maps of Country in which Dreaming and history share a single field. In 1990 he and Trevor Nickolls represented Australia at the Venice Biennale, and in 1994 the National Gallery of Australia mounted the retrospective Roads Cross. In his last years Thomas returned to his ancestral desert Country. After a cataract operation in July 1995 and the death of his wife Rita that August, he travelled in September to Well 33, the place of his birth. The journey renewed his engagement with the landscapes of his childhood and produced his last great series of paintings, depicting Country far from the East Kimberley. Painted in October 1996, the year he stopped painting, Desert Oaks numbers among the last works of his career and belongs to this return. It depicts the vast, usually dry salt-lake system of Lake Dora, near Punmu, which floods after seasonal rain. A single field of burnt orange fills the canvas, held within a dotted black contour, while a darker panel at the left, traced with curving dotted lines, marks the high-water line where the desert oaks stand. The tallest shade trees of the region, they shelter the floodplain and fix the edge of the water. The painting gives the lake its emptiness and its abundance together, and carries the memory of a landscape Thomas knew as a child and revisited at the close of his life. © ROVER THOMAS / Copyright Agency, 2026

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