Sharon Numina
Size 133cm X 90 cm Acrylic on canvas
About Sharon
Sharon Numina was born in 1981 and attended school at Kormilda College Darwin. Sharon is one of six sisters and two brothers. Her mother Barbara Price Mbtitjana, an elder painter and cultural elder from Stirling Station near Tennant Creek taught, all her daughters to paint. Sharon is one of the younger painters of the fabulous Numina Sister desert artists. Sharon lives in Darwin with her older sisters. Sharon's father, now passed, is from Utopia. The stories of Bush Tucker, Goanna, Dingo Tracks, and other themes that Sharon paints are her mother's and father's Country and Dreaming totems and cultural knowledge stories. Sharon and her sisters, and mother, come from a long line of desert painters of the contemporary Aboriginal art and dot-dot central desert movement from well-renowned painter aunties: Gloria and Kathleen Petyerre, who are well-established artists in Alice Springs.
About the artwork
My Country relates to the harvesting of seeds used for making flour and damper, a staple food of traditional life. Seeds were valued and spread around watering places to encourage bountiful growth of native plants. Bush Medicine Leaves refers to the plants harvested for traditional medicine practices, often to boil the leaves in water over the fire.
Water Dreaming relates to the critical knowledge of waterholes, including the Creation stories tied to those places and the way the water sites are linked together by the stories. Dingo Dreaming and Emu Dreaming are the final two of the five stories, related to Creation stories and the role of native fauna in the traditions of Anmatyerre people.
