Gertie Huddleston

Gertie Huddleston's date of birth is uncertain, and estimates range from 1916 to 1933. She was born and raised at the Roper River Mission, now the Ngukurr community, an Anglican mission in Southern Arnhem Land. Her Warndarrang and Mara heritage stems from her father, while her Ngandi and Yugul heritage stems from her mother. Her upbringing at the mission, along with her parents' beliefs, influenced Huddleston's Christian faith, and her work addressed both her faith and her roots in Aboriginal culture. Her time spent at the mission enlarged her knowledge of gardening and caring for the landscape, and she spoke highly of her time spent working on the mission gardens with her family. Mission gardens are a recurring theme in Huddleston's paintings, focusing on the use of the natural landscape, depicting scenes of abundance in the context of human control. Gertie Huddleston's father was Old Joshua, a Wandarang man and Mara speaker from the area surrounding Boomerang Lagoon (Malanyboyboy), about 50 km north of Ngukurr. Her paternal grandmother was also a Mara speaker, and was from the Limmen Bight area. Her mother, Eizabeth, was Ngandi and Yugal, and her country is the area around Numbulwar. Family contact with the mission began when her grandfather began walking from Boomerang Lagoon to the mission to obtain tobacco and other supplies. Her father met her mother, who was working as a seamstress that sewed clothes for young boys, after he moved to the mission full-time, and they had a Christian marriage. Huddleston has four sisters, Betty Roberts, Angelina George, Eva Rogers, and Dinah Garadji, who are all married and all work as artists. Huddleston and her four sisters are collectively referred to as the Joshua sisters. Huddleston's father as well as her fiancé, Bill Huddleston, served as soldiers in World War II. Bill and Gertie were married shortly after the end of the war, and moved to the Roper Valley Cattle Station, about outside of Ngukurr. Huddleston worked as a cook and her husband as a stockman there for almost a decade before moving back to Ngukurr in the late 1960s. Gertie left Ngukurr to go to Darwin in 1982 while her daughter, Miriam, was hospitalized there for seven weeks. She stayed in Darwin for seven years, during which her husband abandoned her and their children. While she faced difficulty raising them alone, it gave her the opportunity to travel Arnhem land to visit family in other parts of the territory. Gertie returned to Ngukurr in the 1980s and settled, beginning her artistic journey in 1993. Many of her paintings feature elements of the different locations and landscapes she saw while living and traveling throughout Arnhem land. She represents them in different ways, with some paintings being a single landscape, a set of panels of various locations, and sometimes even locations superimposed into a single landscape. Willie Gudabi and his wife Moima Willie were artistic inspirations and mentors to Huddleston. She claims they did not teach her how to paint, but she would go to their home to avidly watch them paint. Some of their influence can be seen in Huddleston's paintings that include insects and small animals, much like Willie Gudabi's paintings. ==Career==