"This is called My Mother's Country, its about my mothers place. It's got a lot of sacred things for women's ceremonies.

Barbara creates a cosmic feel to her expression with finely executed dots in which float various anamorphic shapes, that are more intensely worked. These shapes are the areas where she has over painted to conceal symbols of sacred story that are painted beneath and not meant to be seen. Such areas refer to secret abandoned camp-sites that people made as they trekked across the country in search of food, women’s coolamons used to collect fruit and berries and/or forms of women’s body that are adorned with paint for ceremony. Sometimes she incorporates the linear patterns to represent women’s body designs – stripes that are traditionally applied to breasts, arms and legs for ceremonies known as Awelye .

In the Dreamtime these paintings are on rocks in that country, but they have been lost or damaged. All these places in my mother's country, all the sacred places of hers.

Barbara's Mothers is the acclaimed Utopia artist Minnie Pwerle, who passed away in 2006.

If you would like to know more about My Mother's Country and the relationship with Aboriginal Art and culture, please read the following articles or to view video footage of women applying body paint designs: -

• Aboriginal Symbols and their Meanings
• Aboriginal Women
• Awelye (Women's Ceremony Art)
• Utopia Aboriginal Paintings from the Central Desert
• Video- Aboriginal women applying body paint designs
• Tribute Minnie Pwerle