Lanita Numina Napanangka / My Country (LN115)

Lanita Numina Napanangka was born in 1963 and is an Anmatyerre artist from Stirling Station in the Utopia region of Central Australia, between Alice Springs and Tennant Creek. She grew up on Country with her family and is one of the six well-known Numina sisters: Lanita, Jacinta, Caroline, Louise, Selina and Sharon.

Lanita is the daughter of senior artist and cultural elder Barbara Price Mbitjana and Douglas Petyarre. Her paternal aunties were renowned Utopia artists Gloria Petyarre and Kathleen Petyarre, who were important influences on Lanita and her sisters and helped teach them painting and the cultural stories associated with their family and Country.

Lanita attended school at Stirling Station before later moving to Darwin, where she has continued her painting practice. Like her sisters, she draws upon the strong artistic traditions of the women artists of the Utopia region, interpreting stories and cultural knowledge connected to her Anmatyerre heritage.

Her paintings explore women’s connection to Country through subjects including bush foods, bush medicine, water, ceremony and ancestral stories. Over the years she has painted themes such as My Country, Dingo Dreaming, Bush Medicine, Bush Tucker, Water Dreaming, Women’s Ceremony, Thorny Devil Lizard Dreaming and Desert Wildflowers.

Lanita’s My Country paintings often take an expansive, almost topographical view of the landscape. Traditional symbols, pathways and areas of intricate dotting are woven across the canvas, representing features of Country such as waterholes, travelling routes, bush foods and places of cultural significance. Her work combines traditional Central Desert iconography with a distinctive contemporary use of colour, pattern and movement.

Although Lanita has painted less prolifically than some of her sisters, she has developed a recognisable body of work grounded firmly in the Country and cultural knowledge of her family.

In 2004, one of Lanita’s paintings was selected by the Danish community of the Northern Territory as a wedding gift for Crown Prince Frederik and Mary Donaldson. They married in Copenhagen on 14 May 2004 and are now King Frederik X and Queen Mary of Denmark.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

• 2020 – Paintings from the Numina Sisters, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, Western Australia
• 2019 – Numina Quartet, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, Western Australia
• 2019 – Landscape Colours, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, Western Australia
• 2018 – Blue – Aboriginal Paintings, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, Western Australia
• 2017–18 – Christmas Collection 2017, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle, Western Australia

In My Country, Lanita Numina Napanangka presents an aerial view of her Central Australian homelands, mapping the rivers, waterholes, pathways, bush foods and gathering places that connect people to Country.

A winding river runs through the composition, representing one of the important natural features that shape the desert landscape. At different times the river may flow after rain or remain dry for long periods, with the riverbed itself continuing to form an important landmark and pathway through Country. Lanita may depict the river in different colours, reflecting the changing character of the landscape.

Across the surrounding Country, traditional symbols represent women gathering, travelling and collecting food and plant resources. U-shaped forms depict women seated on the ground, while circles and concentric forms can represent waterholes, campsites and other significant places. Other motifs suggest the bush foods, seeds and medicinal plants found across the land and the routes travelled between them.

Lanita combines these traditional symbols with intricate dotting, flowing lines and finely detailed patterns to create a layered, map-like view of Country. Rather than showing the landscape from a single ground-level viewpoint, she brings together many places, journeys and sources of knowledge within one painting, reflecting the deep connection between women, family, food, water and the land.