Deutscher and Hackett

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri is celebrated as the painter of epic map"like canvases, Warlugulong, 1977, (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra) however he started his career more humbly, as a woodcarver.

When I interviewed the artist in 1984, he recalled the moment when as a young stockman he first grasped the potential of woodcarving as a medium.

'I been go back to Napperby ... and I pick 'im out idea! Start from a tree like this - I cut 'im with the axe and tomahawk - I start make 'im saddle first - from wood.'

Rather than reproducing the traditional forms of the shield, boomerang and coolamon, Possum engaged his imagination to create innovative carvings of snakes and goannas from the softwood, ininti. And he delighted in explaining the conception of his ideas.

He told me how the idea for the current sculpture arose when tracking a Perentie (Australia's largest lizard) that had chased down a rabbit. The artist interpreted the traces left by their struggle, reconstructing the event in three dimensions. As well as describing a moment of natural vitality, this carving reveals another aspect of the imagination behind the most complex and ambitious paintings of contemporary desert art.

JOHN KEAN