Jimmy Pike first explored felt-pen drawing and linocut printing in the early 1980s. As an inmate at Fremantle Prison, Pike attended art classes organised by Stephen Culley and David Wroth, who would later establish Desert Designs.

The Jimmy Pike collection includes more than 30 of Pike’s linocuts, offering a rare insight into some of his earliest artworks. Produced mainly in black and white, Pike’s early linocuts show an artist confidently experimenting with new media to represent his desert country.

Pike carved his lino with uneven zigzag lines a technique similar to carved boab nuts a practice common in the Kimberley region. The deep cutting of Pike's lino meant that they were often too fragile for subsequent editions; later copies were either produced as screen-prints or not at all, making many of these early linocuts very rare.