Artist Profile: Karen Mills

Source: National Indigenous Times Issue 55 - 12 May 2004

http://www.nit.com.au/thearts/story.aspx?id=1699

Story by Angus Cameron and Karen Mills

Conversation with Darwin artist Karen Mills quickly reveals an intelligent and vibrant personality.

Reflective and self contained, Mills is playing an increasingly important role in the arts in the

Northern Territory both as an administrative consultant and practicing artist.

Coming back to art later in life with a grown up family behind her, Mills brings a sense of maturity

and awareness to her work. Combine this quiet confidence and self assurance with a sparkling

enthusiasm and one senses an artist on the point of big things.

Born in Katherine in 1960 and adopted at an early age, Mills grew up in the lower southeast of

South Australia and then Adelaide, a solitary only child of non-Aboriginal adoptive parents.

Reading, music, drawing and painting were regular activities in a home where education and

learning were important cultural values for a schoolteacher mother.

Mills first visited Darwin in 1983 to find and meet her Aboriginal birth mother. Her natural family

are from the East Kimberley. While there is occasional contact with relations, the establishment

of close family ties has been complicated after leading vastly separate and different lives.

Karen Mills has now spent the last 15 years living in Darwin permanently, bringing up children

and working in various community organisations. The Mills surname is courtesy of husband

Michael, whose family background is Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal.

Her art renaissance began in 1996 when she enrolled in an Associate Diploma of Fine Art at

the Northern Territory University, later continuing in the Bachelor of Visual Art degree course.

In 1998 Mills spent six months away from home living in Alice Springs working as the trainee/guest

curator of Straight from the Heart, a national travelling exhibition of Central Australian Aboriginal art,

organised by Desart and the Araluen Centre.

In the same year a painting by Mills was hung in the 15th Telstra National Aboriginal and

Torres Strait Islander Art Award. In 2001 Mills was selected in the influential Hatched,

Healthway National Graduate Show at the Perth Institute for Contemporary Art. In 2002 she

was included in the significant Five Darwin Painters exhibition at 24 HR Art, Northern Territory

Centre for Contemporary Art.

In 2003 Mills was one of eight Indigenous artists from Australia selected to attend the Communion

and Other Conversations residency at the prestigious Banff Centre, in Banff, Alberta, Canada.

Thirty-four Indigenous artists from Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and the United States

gathered at the Centre to examine and explore the impact of Christianity and colonialism on

contemporary Indigenous peoples and cultural practices.

The other Australian artists in Banff were Richard Bell, Jenny Fraser, Sandra Hill, Gordon Hookey,

Janice Peacock and Christian Thompson, (Vernon Ah Kee was unable to attend).

The Banff Centre in the Canadian Rockies is a unique arts learning place with a long history of

dedication to the arts, leadership development and mountain culture. The Centre hosts artists

from around the world in a complete range of artistic disciplines including music, theatre, writing

and publishing, Aboriginal arts, media and visual arts and creative electronic environment.

The skills, networks and friendships developed in Banff have had a significant effect on Mills as an artist.

“It was my first major trip outside of Australia and the experience of travelling, meeting many other people,

becoming friends, sharing our art and culture, seeing the sublime beauty of the mountains and living in

an extreme cold climate with snow and ice completely opposite to Darwin’s tropical heat and humidity

was exhilarating. Travelling to other places is good for finding out and understanding more about who I am,

what is most important to me, my family that I have now and my loved ones. My art is informed by all my

life experiences, feelings of connection and disconnection from both my Indigenous heritage and adoptive mother’s influences.”

By incorporating the loop pattern of both traditional dilly bag weaving and knitting stitches in her work Mills

has taken a spiritual journey through the medium of paint.

The physical process of painting is important to the artist as she builds fluid, transparent, layers. The layers

symbolise an internal and external cultural associations creating a sense of family and generational

connection. As the artist explains:

“I become deeply interested and fascinated by the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ spaces that emerge and are revealed

when textural layers are constructed over an underpainting of looping interwoven lines that play across the surface.”

The works are unplanned, the artist relying on the process of layering to express the notion of land and

family, earth and blood. The process of underpainting develops ideas, feelings and relationships which

nurture the creative process in subtle yet powerful forms.

In 2004 Mills plans include completing a body of work for a solo show and further developing her print making

practice. Karen Mills has been an individual member of ANKAAA since 1996.

Karen Mills was assisted to attend the Banff Centre residency by the Australia Council, The Banff Centre,

the Northern Territory Government through the Department of Community Development, Sport and Cultural

Affairs and Don Whyte.