Yondee Shane Hansen was born in 1964 in Perth, Western Australia. A Nyoongar artist, he was taught about art and its practice by his older relatives, mainly his father and aunts. His family is well known for its bark paintings and as a child, he would collect bark along the Swan River for their work. He remembers- “Art was all around me – in the paddocks when the flowers came, in the fields and the crops, along the rivers and around the rocks.”
He started drawing with charcoal before working with paints, focusing solely on black and white. “We had to walk in to get to town. I started drawing with charcoal, drawing on the light grey logs that had no bark. I love the simplicity of black and white, the strength. The black is fire, the white is the tree. From childhood, that’s why I mostly paint black and white paintings.” The simplicity of the two colours provides his work with a strength and presence. His works are connected to a narrative exploring mission life, animals and hunting.
These paintings done in Yondee’s signature black and white style depict stories in an abstract, conceptual form. Subjects of the work vary such as “Storm Clouds” where Yondee paints the change from dry to wet season, “Rock Formations” depicting shapes of the Australian outback and its rock formations and “Fish Nets” where Yondee paints the fish nets made from the grass collected along rivers.