"Waterholes" by Selina Numina Kaprina

Size: 145 x 90cm

Commission work 

Selina went to primary school at Stirling Station in the north Utopia region near Tennant Creek. Her mother's homelands. Selina as with her sisters and brothers was sent to boarding school in Darwin as no secondary schooling was available in Tennant Creek of Alice Springs.

Selina currently resides in Darwin but regularly visits her Country.

Selina 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.

The Bush Medicine Leaves Dreaming knowledge story is a popular theme of the Numina Sisters. Many women from the Peytre, Mambitji, and Numina family name hold custody of the story and are knowledge keepers of painting series themes such as Bush Medicine Leaves, Bush Tucker, Seeded, Soakage, Women's s Ceremony etc - in common with other skin groups across the vast arid creek beds and red sand of central Australia.

Subjects of importance in the theme series painted are various bush tucker. Plant foods include wild berries, plums, onions, yam, seeds etc. Many animals can be depicted as food sources or as totems such as Thorny Devil Lizard and Dingo Tracks.
Women's Ceremony, Awelye Body Art Ceremony are mostly painted by senior ladies but younger women need to know it from a young age. Some themes such as Bush Tucker can be open and universal others can be secret and or significant cultural ceremonies.
 
Knowing, carrying, and reinforcing these stories gives respect for Country and ancestors and shows responsibility and care for holding such stories to keep the stories and traditional practices alive. The knowledge must be retold repeatedly and handed on.

The Numina Sisters have all been taught to paint by their earlier elder painter grandmothers, mother-aunts, and cousin-sisters connected across the Central Desert region. Their mother's and grandmother's Country is in the bush and remote Stirling Station. Their father is from Utopia community side.