Description
- Title: Women Collecting Bush Tucker & Emus
- Medium: Acrylic on pre-primed cotton canvas, stretched
- Year: 2024
- Size: 40 x 51 cm
- Artist skin name: Nakamarra
- Language group: Anmatyerr
- Country: Coniston Outstation
- Born: 1959
Joy has been painting for many years. She paints scenes relating to traditional life in the Central Australian desert. Her artworks feature themes including honey ants, wild bush foods, animals, perentie (monitor lizard) and women’s sites. Her style is fluid and her motifs are rendered with care and feature many small details.
The U-shapes represent women and they are shown carrying food carriers (oval shape) and digging sticks (long line). The concentric circles relate to places the women camped/sat, usually related to sites where water could be found. In each corner are bush foods: bush plums, bush raisins, honey ants and witchetty grubs. The honey ants are shown in underground tunnels moving between sites. Honey ants live deep underground and have swollen abdomens full of nectar collected by worker ants and fed to them. The abdomens are eaten and considered a great delicacy due to the exquisite taste of the bush honey.
Joy spends her time between Alice Springs and Darwin, where her son Dusty (also an artist) lives. Last year she experienced an accident when exiting from a taxi and this has caused irreparable damage to her left arm, requiring the permanent use of a sling. Despite this she continues to paint to support herself and her family.
