BOYCE, Julie Life in the Mulga Lands Village View Gallery, 2013 35pp $14.95 pbk ISBN 9780987583208
The arresting colours of far western Queensland, depicted in acrylic and oil naive style art works by Julie Boyce, leap from the pages of this publication. It was released to accompany her exhibition at the Village View Gallery, in Highfields, Toowoomba, in September 2013. Julie Boyce also received attention at the Stockman’s Hall of Fame celebrations in Longreach in the same month.
The artist narrates and illustrates events from her family’s life based and working on a large sheep property in the Charleville area. At shearing time her mother cooked for up to twenty-eight men. She tells of her parents living in a tent with their first child when the floods came. They had to retrieve chooks and horses and get the camp back into order. Another story, from later on, describes driving towards the town and stopping along the way to collect discarded bottles which the children traded in at the Charleville Soft Drink Factory to build up their funds for Christmas presents. Young children will enjoy the true stories of people and animals and the colours and shapes in the mulga landscape make an indelible impression. EC