Two Laws One Big Spirit are the words used by the late Rusty Peters, to describe the profound connection between himself and fellow artist Peter Adsett. The two artists featured here, shared a love of painting and, despite their disparate worlds, they had an affinity with their approach to creating work.
Peters, a distinguished Gija artist from the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and Adsett, a renowned artist from Aotearoa New Zealand, met in 1998 at Crocodile Hole in the east Kimberley, Western Australia and then again in 1999 at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, where Adsett was lecturing in painting. Peters was a visiting artist at the university and during this encounter an idea was sparked – that the two would make time to get together and paint alongside one another.
In early 2000 the opportunity presented itself, with the artists spending an intensive period of two weeks at Adsett’s home in Humpty Doo south of Darwin. Together, they set formal parameters for how they would work, including the scale and format of their paintings, and their use of a restricted palette of black, white and red.
They painted on alternate days so they could think about what the other person was doing and as Rusty said, ‘let the spirit talk’. This rhythmic approach continued for fourteen days with each painting being completed in the one day, giving each artist a rest day in between.
A shared sense of humanity resonates within this significant body of work and is the result of the deep respect and admiration the two artists had for one another. Their trust in each other enabled their individual spirit to guide and lead the dialogue between them through the medium and language of painting.