Lanita Numina
About Lanita
Lanita Numina is one of the middle sisters of the six well-known desert artists. She has two brothers; her father has passed on and her mum still paints from time to time. Like her sisters, Lanita went to primary school on Stirling Station near Tennant Creek. Like her sisters and mother, she comes from a long line of desert painters of the contemporary Aboriginal art and dot-dot central desert movement.
Lanita lived with her mother and aunties on Stirling Station near Ti Tree. She started painting later than her older sisters. Lanita was taught by her older sisters as well as her other sisters she was surrounded by her well-renowned painter aunties: Gloria and Kathleen Petyarre, who are well-established artists in Alice Springs.Lanita primarily lives with her sisters in Darwin and travels home to visit her mother, Barbara Price Mtjimbana, or to bring her mother to Darwin to visit them all.
The Honey Ant Honey ants are a much-prized delicacy, considered well worth the enormous effort it takes to dig them out of the ground. The ants dig tunnels deep under the ground in ‘jirrijirrinpa’ (mulga woodland) country. Branching from these passageways are chambers (‘mingki’), from the ceiling of which the honey ants are suspended, full of food. With their swollen abdomens, the ants are unable to move.
Honey ants build their nests in the soil beneath a tree or bush and camouflage the entrance with dead leaves. Aboriginal people who collect honey ants from a nest only remove a small proportion of the population for bush tucker and then close up the nest, always aware of their conservation responsibilities and grateful for the gifts of the land.
The Honey Ant is said to be the earthly manifestation of the Seven Sisters.
