As a father, a community leader, a movement maker, and the most collected Aboriginal artist worldwide, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri played a larger than life role for family, disciples, and First Peoples’ entry into the fine art market. Credited with launching the modernist movement, his early works are layered with detail and saturated with color, every area in perspective. He wanted his clan to remember their geography, and his intricate aerial view of land was a means to mark those historical claims. It was also fetchingly beautiful and the first aboriginal art from across the vastness of Australia to find its way into the global art market. Born on a creekbed at a cattle station, Possum fled with his family north of Alice Springs after police massacred dozens of local Aboriginal men. He began painting while working as a stock boy posted to remote stations. By the time he was at Papunya he was creating intricately detailed work. Although the Dreamings appear abstract, each drop of color is part of a complex “mapped out” story. The Art Gallery of New South Wales describes Clifford Possum’s meteoric rise with his 1988 installation at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art: “Tjapaltjarri’s first solo exhibition and the first time an Australian Aboriginal artist had been honoured in this way by the international art world. Over the next decade he would become the most widely travelled Aboriginal artist of his generation and an ambassador for Aboriginal art around the world.”