Juke Wyat, Spangled Drongo Habitat

Artist: Juke Wyat
Title: Spangled Drongo Habitat
Year: 2021
Material: Watercolour and graphite on antique paper (framed)
Size: 267mm high x 330mm wide

"When I was in grade two, about 6 years-old, a teacher picked me out of the class to
do a painting for the school fete which would go in an auction for the school. On the
day I was given this very big board and paints, I’d been drawing a lot in class and at
home but not big canvases... despite what people were telling me to paint I
remember doing these coloured shapes all coming from one of the corners.

I used to feel colour at times in my stomach, real jube-like physical cube like shapes,
quite nauseous in feeling but these coloured shapes (yellow, pink, salmon, orange &
light blues) were very present in my mind (something akin to synesthesia maybe).
We had lots of film & film projectors around when growing up, one brother was
always making stop start animation films on 8mm...we’d have film nights with old
black & white movies and homemade stuff...I was very fascinated by an old
animation with mice building a spaceship and flying into space where all the planets
were made of cheese. I worked out how to set up the projector and I’d watch this by myself over and over.

I travelled to Sydney on an overnight train from Brisbane as a teenager with a guitar
and amp. I got a job at Artist Supply Co. in the Rocks & a bedsit in Glebe by 17, have lived in Sydney since then."