Maisie Nungurrayi Ward / Desert Oak Dreaming (1A)

Artwork is accompanied by Warlukurlangu Artists (Yuendumu) Art Centre Certificate of Authenticity/Provenance

Maisie Nungarrayi Ward was born in 1975 in Papunya, located 168km south east of Nyirripi. and roughly 240km northwest of Alice Springs. She went to Kintore School before going to Yirara College, an Aboriginal boarding college in Alice Springs. When she finished school, she returned home to look after her little sisters.

She began painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation in 2014. She paints both Women’s Jukurrpa and her father’s Kurrkara Jukurrpa (Desert Oak Dreaming), stories passed down over thousands of years and related to her land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. “When I do that painting . . . like it makes me feel happy.”

She lives in Nyirripi with her partner Donald Brown. When she is not painting she likes to play sport.

This painting tells the story of the ‘kurrkara’ tree (Desert Oak) commonly found in many parts of the central desert of Australia. The ‘kurrkara’ tree is the shade tree where the women in this painting sat down to rest at Mina Mina, which is an important ceremonial place.

Mina Mina and the associated land are to the west of Yuendumu in the sandhill country. Women are shown here collecting ‘jintiparnta’ (edible fungus) at Kanta Karlangu, an area that is also called Mina Mina. Ancestral women travelled from here to the north through Janyinki and other places then to the east to Alcoota country. There are a number of ‘mulju’ (water soakages) and a clay pan at Mina Mina and it is here that the women danced and performed various ceremonies. As a result ‘karlangu’ (digging sticks) rose up out of the ground and it is these implements that the women carried with them on their long journey east. The women danced and sang the whole way, with no sleep. The women collected other types of bush tucker such as ‘yakajirri’ (desert raisin).