Rutjip­ma (Mt Son­der), NT
Vanes­sa & Rein­hold Inkamala

We paint­ed our Coun­try and Rutjip­ma. This site is impor­tant to us because it is our fathers’ and grand­fa­thers’ Coun­try. We don’t paint oth­er coun­tries because we don’t know their sto­ries, we only paint our Coun­try and stories.

We enjoyed paint­ing with acrylic paints on a large sur­face because it was dif­fer­ent than our nor­mal paint­ing process.

Urrampinyi — (Old Tempe Downs) — Peter­mann area, NT

Nunay Sel­ma Coulthard

The site I have paint­ed is a sacred place for women and the men keep away from its water­holes. This site rep­re­sents a Dream­ing sto­ry about two girls chased by a man who fan­cies them. They run away to this spe­cial place to hide from the man. The girls are lucky to have the sacred area, the man gets tired of wait­ing and goes back to the com­mu­ni­ty. The girls leave the spe­cial area and return to the com­mu­ni­ty. It turns out that they made the mis­take of leav­ing the site and should not have returned to the com­mu­ni­ty. The man who was stalk­ing them found them and mar­ried them but they still have a spe­cial tie to the place because it is a sacred place for women.

I think it was eas­i­er to paint with acrylics than with my water­colours because it was easy to fix mis­takes by paint­ing over the top. With water­colours you can’t fix mistakes!

Mt Her­manns­burg — Old His­tor­i­cal Build­ing and Native Bush Flow­ers, NT
Kathy & Del­li­na Inkamala 

We paint­ed the West of Mparn­twe (Alice Springs), Ntaria (Her­manns­burg) area.

Del­li­na Inka­mala: Although I didn’t know much about the Dream­ing relat­ing to this site, I felt amazed at how this art­work was turn­ing out. It was an inter­est­ing process see­ing it all come togeth­er, it was very dif­fer­ent from paint­ing with water­colours. Using acrylic paints and paint­ing on a real­ly large sur­face is a dif­fer­ent process from work­ing on a stan­dard water­col­or paper.

Kathy Inka­mala: Ntaria (The Her­manns­burg set­tle­ment) has been around for a long time, and it has a lot of his­to­ry. Paint­ing this work for this project was bit of a chal­lenge but I enjoyed paint­ing the Her­manns­burg mis­sion. It was inter­est­ing paint­ing with acrylics on a large-scale sur­face, and on steel, because I’m used to paint­ing on paper. 

Birds in Tjorit­ja (West Mac­Don­nell Ranges), NT
Noreen Hud­son, Clara Inka­mala & Kath­leen France

Noreen: I paint­ed birds in Tjorit­ja. I paint my Coun­try because every hill has a sto­ry. I heard sto­ries from my father and grand­fa­ther. It is good to paint land­scapes of our Coun­try because we are tra­di­tion­al own­ers, we don’t paint oth­er coun­tries because we don’t know the sto­ries and we are not from there.

I was real­ly excit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in this project because I love paint­ing, because I used to watch Albert (Namatji­ra), my father, and oth­ers paint­ing when I was younger, and then I became inter­est­ed in becom­ing an artist myself.

I did my first land­scape paint­ing when I was a pot­ter at the Her­manns­burg Potters.

My Father’s Father’s Coun­try – Tjorit­ja (West Mac­Don­nell Ranges), NT
Hubert Pareroult­ja

The old peo­ple used to won­der around in the hill’s sides at Tjorit­ja. They would get water from the Rock­hole and camped there for a while to get bush tuck­ers and meats.

I paint­ed this work out­side, in the sun, with acrylics rather than water­colours, which I usu­al­ly use for my work. 

I liked the project and exper­i­ment­ing with the steel medi­um, sur­pris­ing­ly it was not dif­fi­cult to paint on it and it was some­thing dif­fer­ent. I am keen for the world to see it!