"My Country Dreaming" by Sharon Numina Napanangka

About Sharon

Sharon Numina was born in 1981 and attended Kormilda College, Darwin. Sharon is one of six sisters and two brothers. Her mother, Barbara Price Mbtitjana, an older 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, who has now passed away, is from Utopia. The stories of Bush Tucker, Goanna, Dingo Tracks, and other themes 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 harvesting 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 a fire.

Water Dreaming relates to the critical knowledge of waterholes, including the Creation stories tied to those places and how the stories link the water sites. 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 the Anmatyerre people.