Painting at Mijijimaya. Great Sandy Desert West Australia

Peter Woodman; The best painters of running dogs I have ever known

There was a constant volley of small stones flung at high speed with deadly accuracy using slingshots
One of the main young artists. Who did the painting above.

Everyone had a go.

Sitting in the river bed the old man marked out the country in chalk. This was used to frame the paintings done back at camp.

The back of the painting where he has written in Nyangumarta the fundamental statement;
This is my Country.

One of the early watercolour paintings by Peter Woodman showing the river, sand hills and a dead tree.

We ended up painting the school as well.

None of these paintings were ever traded for money. They were regarded as far too precious for that.

A detail from the big painting showing both a hunting story and a traditional story.

These paintings emerged as a result of me giving some of the older boys some materials to make images with. I was trying to get some of my own painting done and they were hanging around distracting me. My role at the time was Mr. Mum while my partner worked at the school. In the mornings two year old son Rhidian would go with mum to the school and it was then that these young men would visit to have a yarn.
I was obsessively keeping up with painting. The clarity and strength of their imagery astounded me. This relationship developed into trips to the river, that often took all day I was often saying' how much further' and they were saying 'not far'. An older man or two would come along sitting next to me while the boys sat on the roof with the guns looking out for kangaroo.
At first the content of the paintings was the story of our trips. The big painting is bisected by the track of the local rivers.

This place is Mijijimaya. In the Great Sandy Desert in North West Australia. It's name is derived from "Missus Maya" (camp) referring to a time when there was an attempt by white people to farm sheep among the sand hills and a woman was brought out to live there. They say she never came outside. The people are the traditional owners, Nyangumarta who had refused to continue working for the white man in 1946. Some background about their commitment to cultural maintenance can be found here.
The leaders were at the time locked into a battle with the WA Government that is symbolic of the ongoing oppression of Indigenous people. A Google search on Strelly Mob' will unearth more background on these people.

The journey here began travelling South over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the setting new moon caught my eye, it was at that moment that I knew the plan to go out into the desert and be with these people was the right plan. Since that moment that first sliver of the moon following the sun below the horizon has always reminded me of that journey over the bridge. All my ambitious peers with whom I competed so lustily were off to London and Paris. I was always planing to do the same; the traditional template of the budding Australian artist required as much. So to do the opposite, head in instead of out, was challenging the accepted wisdom and until the moon spoke I was fearful.