Eubena Nampitjin

(born circa 1924)

Artist's Country, 1990

Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
Warlayirti Artists, Wirrimanu (Balgo Hills), Western Australia
Purchased from Sotheby's, Important Aboriginal Art, Melbourne, 28 June 1999, lot 96
The Laverty Collection, Sydney

LITERATURE:
Stephen Williamson and Samantha Togni (eds.), Eubena Nampitjin Art and Life, Balgo Hills, W.A.: Warlayirti Artists Aboriginal Corporation, 2005, cat. no.22, p.45 (illus.)
Colin Laverty and Elizabeth Laverty et al., Beyond Sacred: Recent Painting from Australia's Remote Aboriginal Communities - the collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, Melbourne: Hardie Grant Books, 2008, p.124 (illus.)
Colin Laverty and Elizabeth Laverty et al., Beyond Sacred: Australian Aboriginal Art - the collection of Colin and Elizabeth Laverty, Edition II, Melbourne: Kleimeyer Industries, 2011, p.136 (illus.)

The site of this painting is Yangayana, near the Canning
Stock Route where Eubena spent her early years with
her family: it depicts the waterholes they lived on, trees
that provided wood for weapons and tools and firewood,
and the sand hills that dominate the landscape. The
place is associated with the Dingo Dreaming and the
Moon Dreaming. Artist's country, 1990, is composed
along a matrix of place symbols, the circles, joined by
journey lines as in conventional Western Desert paintings
associated with the Tingari ancestors. The fluid nature of
the matrix bears the painterly influences of her husband's
work. This relatively early painting features the use of
particular reds and yellows, synthetic paints that had been
introduced to the artists of Balgo in 1989 and that had
attracted Eubena for their similarity to natural occurring
red and yellow ochres (C. Watson in Brody, A. [ed],
Stories: Eleven Aboriginal Artists, Works from The Holmes à Court Collection, Sydney: Craftsman House, 1997, p.52).

Wally Caruana

This painting is sold with accompanying Warlayirti Artists documentation.