Pushing the line: An unlikely artistic collaboration in the Kimberley

For Paddy Bedford, the day usually began soon after dawn. Tony Oliver, a former Melbourne gallerist who had worked alongside Bedford for close to a decade since arriving in the East Kimberley in 1998, would wake shortly afterwards. It was at this hour, as day and night pulled against each other, that Oliver would see the old Gija man's paintings all around him. They were there in the blush of pink over the horizon and the dark silhouettes of landforms that hung like cut-out shapes against the sky. Bedford had always risen with the sun. He was born on Bedford Downs Station and had worked a full life as a stockman before becoming a painter. Dawn had always presented an opportunity for him to sit quietly and take in the formal nuances of his country; if you knew how to look, everything could be seen with striking clarity.