Phyllis Ningamara / My Country (5A)

This is my country at Woorre Woorrem (on Ivanhoe Station). In the wet season time the whole country is full of little run off creeks and billabongs, that’s what I painted here.  This country of mine is really good, I was born in this country. I would follow my mother and father hunting. They showed me all kinds of food, from the bush. I got used to it with my father and mother. She taught me about bush food.

Phyllis’s series of paintings are resplendent in colour. Her palette of bright ochres, mixed carefully from burnt pigments, makes her one of the most extraordinary colourists working in the medium today. Her images capture a country full of crisscrossed watercourses – creeks, rivers and freshwater springs – as they overflow and multiply with the wet season rains.