Palya (Hello).
My name is Lloyd Kwilla, and this is my story.
I come from a place where time moves differently.
I was born on my grandmother's country in the Great Sandy Desert, and raised in Christmas Creek. The red dirt remains under my fingernails, in my blood, in my spirit, in my very being.
My father, the celebrated artist Billy Joongarra Thomas, revealed to me the truth that art and stories flow through us. I watched him work with Red Rock Art, transforming humble materials into works that carried our stories to other places. In his quiet determination, I also found my path.
People have written about my exhibitions and accolades.
How Australian Art Collector magazine named me one of the country's "top undiscovered artists" back in 2004, the same year of my first Sydney exhibition. They speak of my sell-out show during Darwin's NATSIAA in 2007, and how every single piece sold at London's prestigious Rebecca Hossack Gallery in 2008, with nearly twenty more commissioned on the spot.
But these moments, these markers along the road, they're just weather that passes overhead. What endures beneath is my steady work of painting the stories that will outlive their teller.
Fame from art is just noise that fades by sundown. The real work happens in silence, when the songlines find their way through you, connecting what came before to what remains after you're gone.
Out here where I live now in Pandanus Park, we listen hard to Country.
When paint costs more than food, Country teaches you to listen. I gather black from fire's remains, white from limestone hills that have witnessed countless seasons, red ochre from riverbanks where my ancestors fished, and yellow from plains where our Dreamtime stories unfold.
When I craft a boomerang or sculpt an animal form, I continue a conversation that began before written language.
My hands follow patterns my grandfather's grandfather knew.
And my children have watched me work, just as I watched my father. They ask questions, absorb techniques, and slowly become vessels themselves. Knowledge survives in these quiet moments between generations. My greatest achievement walks beside me, my children learning.
Art and life flow as one river. When I paint, I map belonging.
Country teaches patience like nothing else. Nothing here happens in a hurry. The marks I make today connect to those made 60,000 years ago, and hopefully, to those in future generations.
"I think of my people, and how that story is gonna continue on even though they're gone. And I'm carrying that story. This is why I wake each morning, mix my paints, and begin again. Because these stories must endure."
Artistic Recognition
Though his painting career spans just over a decade, Kwilla’s works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, earning acclaim for their cultural integrity and aesthetic power. His exhibitions include:
Australasian Arts Projects 303, Singapore (Group Exhibition)
2011
Trevor Victor Harvey Gallery, Sydney
2011
Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London
2008
