Stewart Hoosan Australian , b. 1951

Stewart Hoosan was born at Doomadgee Station, Queensland in 1951. He is an Indigenous painter whose work depicts the landscape and his experiences of  his native country of Warkurra Yarji Kurrwanyi Baki Kunundirrinya. He is Junggayi, or cultural custodian, for the Robinson Wollogorang Country, and employs his painterly practice as a means of transmitting and continuing the law and culture of his nation. 

A Garrwa man through his mother and Gangalida through his father, Hoosan bears the name Wurrlbiyanguna and the skin Burralangi. His grandfather, an Afghan cameleer named Joe Hoosan, is recalled by Thelma Dixon as a “proper middle eastern man.” It was nonetheless under his grandfather’s care that Stewart was educated in the customs and traditions of country, fostering within him a profound love and respect for the land which underpins his art. Hoosan recalls watching his grandfather paint on cave walls. Historians have described this region as "the last wild frontier," and the oral histories, interviews, and paintings that survive from it attest to sustained Indigenous resistance to settlement and a determined commitment to the continuity of law and culture.

At the young age of nine, Hoosan was removed from his family and placed into work at white settler Walter Camp’s Robinson river station. Learning how to ride and bullock and horse droving, Stewart travelled across his grandmother's country assisting Camp until he turned 21, when he set off to re-connect with his mother. Following her to Derby, Western Australia, the family soon returned to Robertson River country, where Stewart settled with his wife, Nancy McDinny. As he describes:

"I have a small station with cattle and horses still here now… and a lemon tree". 

The desire to continue the storytelling traditions of previous generations, whilst simultaneously educating audiences on and bearing witness to the brutal realities faced by Indigenous communities under colonisation and white settlement, is at the heart of Hoosan’s art. His work fluidly moves between atemporal, non-figurative language of traditional indigenous painting and more linear, narrative-based compositions. As he explains: 

“I need to tell the stories of how the settlers came and shot half our people and how the old fella – my great grandfather Mayawagu was fighting. I want to tell the story of the old people, how they told us. Stories of shoot outs, poddy dodgers, the old pub and the jail. The settlers and their aboriginal wives, the mission days.”

Two motifs which recur throughout Hoosan’s oeuvre are Mitjiwaru and Nguburngurr. Mitjiwaru is the intense wet season, in which it can rain continuously for an entire month. 

Nguburngurr refers to his grandfather's knowledge of the distinctive number seven boomerang, often mesmerically produced by Hoosan on large-scale canvases. 

A close friend of the gallery, Hoosan has travelled to London to stay with Rebecca, who in turn visits him and Nancy in Borroloola.