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A self-taught artist, Onus grew up watching his father William Onus (1906–1960) carve and paint in his Belgrave shop, where boomerangs, textiles and ceramics bearing Aboriginal designs were made and sold. As a young man, Onus met many Aboriginal artists, including landscape painters Ronald Bull (1943–1979) from Lake Tyers in Victoria and Revel Cooper (1938–1983) from Carrolup in Western Australia. Together with Albert Namatjira, these artists provided the inspiration for Onus’s emerging style.
Onus's regular spiritual pilgrimages to Arnhem Land (Maningrida) which, he later mused, gave him 'back all the stuff that colonialism had taken away.' As Neale observes, 'now, in addition to his own ancestral site at Barmah forest he was permitted to access new sites of significance such as Arafura Swamp, or his adoptive community at the outstation Garmedi; to kinship systems in which he and his family were assigned skin names; to language that he used for many of the titles of his works; to ceremony and Dreaming stories.' These trips were the catalyst for the development of a radical new painting style that united the iconography of Aboriginal and European art traditions. Onus met Murrungun/Djinang artist Jack Wunuwun and was adopted into his family. Wunuwun taught Onus law and culture and significantly gave him permission to use customary designs, including rarrk (crosshatching). Onus subsequently embarked upon his celebrated 'water and reflection' series which, rich in reflections and ambiguities, substituted the traditional European panoramic view for one described by his mentor Wunuwun as 'seeing below the surface’