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An exhibition of Jimmy Pike felt-tip pen drawings coming to UWA's Berndt Museum will turn the museum's gallery into a creative workshop for young visitors.

Indigenous artist Jimmy Pike was a great story teller and his felt-tip pen drawings - completed at an isolated desert camp - amplify his tales, taking viewers through the red desert landscape the late artist knew so well.

Over the next few months, local primary school children visiting UWA's Berndt Museum will embark on a unique interactive journey guided by Pike's iconic images of waterholes, slithering snakes, totem figures and plants. They won't just view the art, they'll use the bright felt-tip Artline pens offered by staff to create their own images - in the style of the Walmajarri artist.

Jimmy Pike's Artlines arrives at UWA's Berndt Museum on 29 June and runs until mid-December. The works on paper were produced at the artist's camp and his final home in Broome between 1990 and 2000 and this is the first time they have been displayed. The museum's interactive invitation to children is also a first.

Dr John Stanton, Director of the Berndt Museum, first met Jimmy Pike in the early 80s, when the artist was in Fremantle Gaol and just beginning to make linocuts. Later, when the UWA anthropologist was working in the Kimberley, they met again at a Broome exhibition, when the artist was working with acrylic on canvas. After Pike's death, many of his drawings were placed on extended loan with the Berndt Museum.

"I am very proud and honoured that Jimmy wanted the museum to safeguard his treasures," says Dr Stanton. "For me the Artline drawings were the jewels of the collection and I knew they would make an outstanding exhibition because they are magical. I have never before seen the likes of these small vibrant works in Aboriginal art. Here was a new medium, a new conceptualisation, resonating with Jimmy's passion for country," says Dr Stanton.

Dr Stanton was struck by Jimmy Pike's deep appreciation of Walmajarri country and the places he knew from his youth. Many works are dominated by the mythic landscape of the region, the tracks of the Jumangkarni (Dreamtime) Beings linking the sacred places of the land.

"He sang the stories that belonged to these places as he painted, renewing the powerful linkages and memories he had of his country," recalls Dr Stanton. "He kept the country alive through this most powerful imagery."

Museum Marketing Manager Eve-Anne O'Regan says the works on paper draw on the knowledge and skills the artist learnt as a boy growing up in the hunting-gathering tradition of his family.

"While Jimmy Pike is best known for his acrylic paintings on canvas and the internationally recognised textile designs through the Desert Design label, this exhibition showcases his experimental approach to colour, texture and drawing. After trying many spirit markers, Pike settled on Artline 70 and 90 for their strong and enduring colours."

For visiting school children, the attraction will be not only the visual story-telling of the works but the opportunity to replicate them. Each child will be presented with a book of postcards that allow them to turn a simple printed image into a vibrant artwork.

Young visitors will be urged to take home the postcards and to send their best artwork (reply paid) to the museum for display.

"The hope is that the children will bring the whole family back to the gallery to see their work, and the exhibition," says Ms O'Regan.

Jimmy Pike's Artlines will be on display at the Berndt Museum's Janet Holmes a Court Gallery in the Dr Harold Schenberg Art Centre at UWA from 29 June to 15 December.

The exhibition was co-ordinated by Adjunct Professor in Social and Environmental Sciences Sandy Toussaint, in collaboration with UWA graduate Pat Lowe (psychologist, writer and environmentalist, who was Jimmy Pike's partner), Terry Murungkurr Murray, the artist's grandson, and the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre in Fitzroy Crossing.

"Terry's cultural input, storytelling and contextual naming of the works alongside Pat Lowe's expertise, have added dimensions that, I believe, should always be present when Aboriginal art is exhibited," says Professor Toussaint.

Pat Lowe is one the 26 contributors to Kimberley Stories , a collection of works by Aboriginal and non- Aboriginal writers, poets and artists edited by Sandy Toussaint, who has worked as an anthropologist in the area for three decades. The book was published by Fremantle Press at the beginning of June.

Published in Uniview Vol. 31 No. 2 Winter 2012