Mother's Country
Year: 2019
Size: 1100x2000
Barbara creates a cosmic feel to her expression with finely executed dots in which float various anamorphic shapes, that are more intensely worked. These shapes are the areas where she has over painted to conceal symbols of sacred story that are painted beneath and not meant to be seen. Such areas refer to secret abandoned camp-sites that people made as they trekked across the country in search of food, women's coolamon's used to collect fruit and berries and/or forms of women's body that are adorned with paint for ceremony. Sometimes she incorporates the linear patterns to represent women's body designs - stripes that are traditionally applied to breasts, arms and legs for ceremonies known as Awelye. In the Dream-time, these depictions are on rocks in that country, but they have been lost or damaged. "All these places in my mother's country, all the sacred places of hers." Barbara's Mother is the acclaimed Utopia artist Minnie Pwerle, who sadly passed away in 2006.
