Kathleen Petyarre
Selected Works | Biography


© 2008

My Country - After Hailstorm represents an aerial view composition of Kathleen Petyarre’s sacred Dreaming site of the Mountain Devil Lizard in the vicinity of Mosquito Bore on Utopia Station in the eastern desert of central Australia. It is here at the site of the Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming that the men and women of the eastern Anmatyerre language conduct important secret and sacred initiation ceremonies.

This Dreaming site is situated in the artist’s father’s country and the general locality is identified by a group of sand-hills that rise majestically from the desert floor represented in this painting by the prominent parallel lines.

The painting portrays the area scattered with seeds, summer bush flowers and spinifex grasses. The sand-hills represents a sacred Women’s Dreaming site associated with the green pea (antweth).

The seeds (ntang) depicted throughout the painting are of the green pea, (antweth) that
is an important food source, for the “traditional healer” (ngangkar), and the Mountain Devil Lizard (Arnkerrth).

The white painted areas represent hailstones Puta Puta that shows a big hailstorm has passed over the country. Hailstorms are an unusual yet common occurrence during the summer months in the eastern desert of central Australia.

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 FW10780