Paddy Japaljarri Stewart

(c. 1940)–

Paddy Japaljarri Stewart’s country lies in the Mount Allan and Mount Dennison area and his Dreamings are marlu (kangaroo), ngurlu (seed) and janganpa (possum). Paddy Stewart, who was born in about 1940 at Mount Dennison, was one of five senior men—two Japaljarris, two Jupurrulas and one Jungarrayi—who worked on the Yuendumu Doors project of 1983–84, and he painted the largest number of doors. Working with the dynamic, messy abandon of graffiti artists, the male leaders planted a message of Dreaming Law and Warlpiriness on the school doors: the modern equivalent of a cave wall. Their kuruwarri (ancestral designs), published in 1987, with accompanying bilingual text, established Yuendumu contemporary painting as a ‘fauve’ art of bright colour strongly anchored in Warlpiri Law. Paddy Stewart has painted and exhibited regularly with the Aboriginal Warlukurlangu Artists’ Association, both nationally and internationally, since its formation in 1985. Most significantly, Paddy Stewart and Paddy Japaljarri Sims revisited the Yuendumu Doors project in 2000 when they produced a brilliant series of etchings, based on the initial paintings, which was awarded first prize in the Works on Paper section of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2001.

This work from very early in the artist’s career depicts one of Stewart’s Dreamings—marlu, the ancestral kangaroo, associated with the site of Yanarriliyi (Mount Dennison) to the east of Yuendumu. Marlu travelled all the way to Yatarla, far to the west. Japaljarri has shown the kangaroo travelling from its ngurra (central camp or home) in search of food and camping beside mulju (soakages) and hills. The path of the kangaroo is depicted by its red wirliya (tracks), indicative of the marks left in the ground by his tail and paws. The four curvilinear patches outlined with white dots represent the kangaroo lying down asleep. The variegated background indicates topographical features of the country through which the kangaroo travelled and left his spiritual essence. This Dreaming, together with its kuruwarri (ancestral designs) and country, is sacred to Japaljarri and Jungarrayi men and Napaljarri and Nungarrayi women.

Judith Ryan