Freddie Timms (Ngarrmaliny Janama), known as "raging bull" because of his high temperament, was born at Police Hole, an outstation of Bedford Downs Station in the East Kimberley region, around 1946. He lived and worked as a stockman for most of his life on Bow River Station and at Lissadell Station until 1985 when he moved to the Warmun community at Turkey Creek. He started painting in 1989 and has exhibited in several shows at William Mora Galleries, elsewhere in Australia and overseas.

The painted representations of his country are based on real topographical features rather than ancestral mythological ones, as they often focus on the landscape's history and changes since colonisation. Though some paintings find their inspiration in the ancestral Dreaming stories, many of Timms' paintings tell about exploitation, booze and violence. Spareness in space and a limited palette of ochre and oxide pigmented colours are typical. Recently he began painting depictions of Ned Kelly, a legend which has been part of the Kimberley dreamings' repertoire for at least 70 years. Timms is the chairman of Jirrawun Aboriginal Art Corporation and lives at Frog Hollow.

Selected bibliography

GEORGEFF, Simon, "Kimberley painters in a legal bind", The Australian, 14/08/1998

GEORGEFF, Simon, "Drawing the line", The Sunday Age, 23/08/1998

MAKIN, Jeff, "Raging Bull", The Herald Sun, 07/09/1998

RYAN, Judith, Images of Power: Aboriginal Art of the Kimberley, ex cat, National Gallery of Victoria, 1993

Jirrawun Aboriginal Art

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