Inland Sea, 2003 by Dorothy Napangardi 150x30cm Cat 8070(B)DN

The first image is a closeup of this painting (please click through the images to see the full painting).

When it’s filled with water, there are so many waterbirds, shells, sea animals there hovering around it. Like seagulls and the seabirds, kestrels and things like that. It’s not really an inland sea but I can understand why non-indigenous people might describe it that way, think about it that way.

Maybe that’s why Dorothy thinks of an ‘inland sea’ – because that’s what it looks like, in a kind of a way, although it’s a lake, a lake that’s dry most of the time.

Source: Jeannie Herbert Nungarrayi (discussing Dorothy Napangardi’s Dreaming — Kana-kurlangu), Dancing Up Country, the art of Dorothy Napangardi, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney NSW Australia.

Dorothy Napangardi created a series of works titled "Inland Sea". This work is a strong interpretation of the salt incrustations on the claypans of Mina Mina , an important ceremonial Women's Dreaming site of which the artist is a custodian.

It was here she lived a nomadic existence with her extended family until a very serious drought in the 1960's meant that desert people were obliged to leave their traditional land to survive. It was many years before Napangardi could return and undertake the ceremonies that passed on knowledge.