Cheryl Craig Aboriginal Artist

During her school years she was encouraged to paint by her teachers and won a prize in a contest held by the Cowra art gallery. Her mother taught her that she had a gift for colours and that she should use her paintings to tell the stories of her people.
She would learn the stories from her family and the elders from the Erambie mission. Her mother would call it "yarn time"

Cheryl now has children and a grandchild of her own and lives with her family in the town of Young NSW, not far from her mother's birthplace on the Erambie Mission at Cowra.

She paints to tell the stories of her people and of her own dreaming. Many of her paintings are in the contemporary urban aboriginal style, combining traditional aboriginal forms with modern mediums and techniques. She also paints in the abstract style, exploring her own ideas and stories.

To be Aboriginal goes a lot deeper than you may think.... Being Aboriginal is not something learned from a book or even a religion learned from a church ...BUT a way of life. We MUST be kept free to be what we are, and will come to know and feel it sooner or later...it's not in our heart, brain, skin or any other part of the body...it's in our spirit, and it's that which pushes us to learn the ways of our Ancestors and to be one with the land, as the land is born in every fibre of our being.

This is a topic that has been around for a long time, especially with the aboriginal in custody. No Aboriginal should ever put themselves in a situation where they will be put behind bars and locked away from the land...it's like cutting off our own feet.

I am often asked why I am so passionate and proud to be an aboriginal, and what about my white herritage? I tell them this simple thing " Yes I have white blood too...BUT my spirit/soul is Aboriginal"...

NO...Being aboriginal is not a religion in any sense of the word...it's the way we are born.

Written by Wiradjuri Artist Cheryl Craig
November 2004