An hour with Dorsey Smith is an hour with the senses.

As he talks, you quickly become aware that Dorsey is an artist who doesn’t just rely on what he sees. Dorsey’s inspiration, having its genesis in Dhunghutti and Gumbangerri traditions, comes from the sights, smells, taste, sounds and touch of the land. His stories are full of descriptions of what happens to the senses as people connect and re-connect with the landscape; the crunch of leaves as you walk in the bush, the smell of eucalyptus trees, the taste of salt, the sight of the sun setting over the hills, the touch of bark as you run your hands down the trunk of a tree.

Dorsey’s motif is the journey, and it is reflected in his work. It is a personal motif as his own trajectory saw him spending years sleeping rough and battling an alcohol addiction. Dorsey’s journey, however, now sees him in a place where his artwork is his life. Dorsey has found his purpose and his passion.

Born in 1968 on the Greenhill Mission in Kempsey, Dorsey learned to dance at the age of ten. A group of men, including his grandfather, an initiated elder, formed a dance troupe, which Dorsey joined. The men and boys made spears, wooden artifacts, and costumes. They learned how to paint up. He learned to appreciate and understand the bush, where the dancers practised. His imagination took flight. On one occasion, the troupe found a tree at the back of the mission where they noticed vines wrapped up in ball shapes. They made up a dance called The Bee Dance, a dance about what happens when people are stung.

When Dorsey was very young, he took part in his first dance in public. He remembers the racism directed at the troupe by a group of white males. He says, ‘I felt like throwing my spear at them, but I remembered my grandfather’s words: ‘Walk with pride because no-one can take away who you are. Stand tall, shoulders back, and don’t care about what anyone says.’ He chose not to care about and walk with pride.

Dorsey had always doodled rather than drawn. His brothers drew cartoon characters, but he could not compete with their style, so he found his own.

After leaving school, he undertook an Aboriginal Art and Cultural Practice pilot program at the Greenhill Reserve. He also played professional rugby. By now, the dance troupe was getting recognition and performed at carnivals and country music festivals. At the time, they were the only professional Indigenous dance troupe in New South Wales, travelling interstate and representing Aboriginal Australia in the South Pacific Festival of the Arts in Tahiti in 1985.

Despite his talents, Dorsey fell into the trap of alcohol and spent many years partying, but never stopped studying, painting and drawing. In 2003, a life-changing moment saw his journey take another turn. ‘One day,’ he says, ‘I was sitting in Sydney in 2003, drinking. I stood up and moved away from the group I was drinking with and went and sat down under a tree, by myself. I asked my ancestors for guidance. At that moment, my ancestors answered, and my journey of healing began.’ Dorsey says that he began to understand that feeding off the tree of knowledge without understanding the tree of life was the key to him healing.

After completing many different courses at TAFE, Dorsey was then accepted into the Bachelor of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts at UNSW. He began to be noticed, and his first exhibition was held at Boomali in 2005. He followed that up with a cultural tour of Africa, where he taught students and exchanged ideas about art.

Dorsey believes all humankind is connected by symbols. He’s studied symbols and meaning from the cultures of the Druids, the Egyptians, the Mayans, the indigenous peoples of Australia and many other peoples. There are similarities in many stories and symbols and differences as well. ‘The circle, for example, has sacred significance in many cultures, and it is this universality that I’m interested in.’

The Tree of Life is another image that has captured Dorsey’s imagination. It also appears in many cultures. It is not necessarily the same type of tree, and what Dorsey is interested in is why it is significant in each culture. ‘I looked at the Boab trees in Africa. I looked at a tree that was at the back of the Kinchela Boys Home in Kempsey. I saw the similarities, the journey that is nature, the journey that is in us.’

In the recent past, Dorsey has been creating; painting, drawing, sculpting, writing songs and making short videos. He has recorded stories in both Dunghutti and English with images he has created. He says he wants people to soak up what they feel. ‘Not only to see a work but to feel a work. If you really feel a work of art, if your senses are heightened, then there is more chance of people respecting the sacredness of the land and understanding the culture,’ Dorsey says.

Dorsey is interested in cross-cultural learning and wants to promote different and alternate ways of classroom learning. ‘There are Indigenous ways of learning that would benefit our education system,’ he says. At present, Dorsey is working with imagineer.me, creating curriculum content that embodies a sharing of visual and spatial domains where all students, regardless of cultural background, can participate, learning about themselves and their journeys and also about Indigenous culture. In his traditional culture, learning is about being allowed to gain knowledge at certain stages. Now, however, Dorsey is reinventing the learning concept to allow non-Indigenous students to share in Indigenous methods of learning. It’s about sharing. It’s transactional, allowing students access to other ways of learning that are visual, interactive, can be individual or group-focused and that foster skills in participation and higher-order thinking. Working with narrative-driven learning, visual learning and using collaborative methods can work across the curriculum and can bring about effective engagement with education.

‘The programs I’m designing are about bringing more Indigenous learning methods into the classroom that everyone can share in and learn from. It’s a win-win.’