Hippai Francis was born in Mungindi on his Ancestral lands of the Guinberai, a clan of the Gamilaroi Nation. He grew up around the north-western districts of New South Wales and the south-west of Queensland, especially around Moree.
He has dabbled in watercolour painting since a child but was given serious lessons in his 50s where he began to ‘appreciate colour, shape and composition’, he says. And it was in 2023 that he was introduced to acrylic ‘Aboriginal’ art whilst incarcerated.
Specialising in themes of Australian native fauna and flora, as well as Aboriginal themes of land and Country, he states ‘[w]hen painting, it is like an emotional outpouring. It leaves me exhausted but very satisfied. My paintings are my soul bared’.
His style is deliberately naïve, ‘simple realism’ he calls it, using ‘Aboriginal motifs’ and ‘dotting’ and always including two of his totems – the Moon and the Owl - as well as his Namoi River signature.
‘I visualise it in my mind, in a basic way,’ shares Hippai of his creative technique. ‘Then do a rough draft in pencil on a pad’. He then copies the idea to a prepared surface and allows himself to be ‘led by paint and brush’.
‘My paintings feel like they are an extension of me; they show me. The feel like they are a part of me - of my body, or my family’.