Charlie Numbulmore

Charlie Numbulmoore, cave-painter and artist, resided for many years at Gibb River Station in the central Kimberley, heartland of the Ngarinyin people. During the 1960s Charlie worked closely with anthropologist Ian Crawford who recorded him repainting wanjina images in Mamadai cave. (1968:25-27).

Works by Charlie, commissioned by Helen Groger-Wurm on behalf of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in 1970, are now part of the National Estate (Ryan with Akerman, 1993: 20-21).

In 1971, South Australian grazier and collector Tom McCourt, visited the central Kimberley and purchased a number of paintings executed on bark, ply-wood and cardboard, depicting wanjina and other spirit beings that Charlie had executed (McCourt 1975: 48,52-53). McCourt also commissioned Charlie to paint a wanjina figure on an archaeological millstone found in the area.

Charlie’s wanjina figures are generally readily identifiable. The body is usually painted in solid white pigment (invariably derived from the mineral huntite) with details added in red, black and yellow ochres. In the center of the chest is a solid, usually black but occasionally red, oval form said to depict the sternum/heart or a pearl shell pendant.

The almost circular heads are surrounded by a very regular halo or headdress that represents simultaneously the hair, clouds and lightning. Solid, black round eyes with delicate lashes are windows to the furthest edges of the universe – and then beyond. These eyes, along with the narrow, outlined noses suggest the silent crania of clan ancestors that rest on shelves and in crannies of many Wanjina caves.

Those that are shown head and shoulders only may have the body left unornamented but occasionally like this example, it is infilled by careful stippling. The arms are rarely indicated.

Paintings showing full-length figures are rarely as comfortably executed, with heads out of proportion with the often doll-like bodies and quite unlike the cyclopean grandeur of full-length figures found in shelters and caves. The bodies are invariably painted in a color other than white and are infilled with white stippling.

In this example the almost naturalistic bodies appear to have been possibly painted over the shoulders of the upper set of heads. Sternum, finger- and toenails, wrists and ankle joints are shown, but the hair-belt or girdle around the hips, is not depicted.

An anomaly, which Charlie introduced in the final years of his life was the inclusion of a mouth and sometimes teeth. At this period Charlie also began adding nostrils to the noses of his wanjina paintings - transforming the organ into a somewhat serpent-like form.

Charlie Numbulmoore died in the later months of 1971.

Kim Akerman

Cf., for related examples and discussion of the artist see, Crawford, I.M., The art of the Wanjina. Aboriginal cave paintings in Kimberley, Western Australia, Oxford University Press, London, 1968; McCourt, T, Aboriginal Artefacts, Rigby, Australia, 1975; Ryan, J. with Akerman, K. (Eds), Images of Power. Aboriginal art from the Kimberley, National Gallery of Victoria, 1993