Jeremiah has painted Dird, in the Dreamtime, many animals took the form of humans and wandered around various parts of the country. Quoll and Dird were two men, both hunters. Quoll saw how good a hunter Dird was and saw the women and girls watching him. He became so jealous of Dirds success that he challenged Dird to a fight. The fight was vicious and after much struggle, Quoll won. Dird was so ashamed he decided he didn’t want to live on the earth any more. He flew up into the night sky and can still be seen as the man in the moon.

Yikarrakkal, Mann River District, Central Arnhem Land are the astronomical figures related to clan lands known as Dird Djang or ‘Moon Dreaming’. There is a large round hole in stone said to represent the moon. This area was once an important camp site for ancestors and includes many rock art galleries and mortuary sites.

Kunwinjku art is part of the oldest continuous art tradition in the world. Ancestors of today’s artists have been painting the rock walls of West Arnhem Land for tens of thousands of years. The traditional palette of white, red, yellow and black comes from the ochre that naturally occurs in the region, although contemporary artists sometimes choose to paint in acrylics as well. Kunwinjku artists famously paint using either the traditional rarrk hatching technique, or the more contemporary and complex cross hatching technique which has been adapted from ceremonial painting. These lines are painted using a manyilk, which is a piece of sedge grass shaved down until only a few fibres remain.

Artists at Injalak Art Centre have been painting on Arches 640gsm handmade watercolour paper since it was introduced as a medium by American art collecter John W. Klunge in 1990 when he commissioned a suite of paintings for the Kluge-Ruhe Collection at the University of Virginia, USA. It is archival quality and has an organic texture that mimics the natural surface of bark, making it an excellent alternative in West Arnhem Land where trees suitable for bark harvesting are much sparser than other areas of the Top End of Australia.

This painting needs to be framed. It’s also being sent direct from the artist at a remote art centre, Injalak Arts, in the top end. Please note there is only one mail plane a week that takes the artwork to Gunbalanya. The tracking information is then received a week later when the mail plane returns so often the paintings are delivered before we receive the tracking information. Please expect a slightly longer wait for this very special artwork to arrive.