Unseen Rivers & The Desert Rose // Sister Piece Description

My half of the Sisterpiece.

In August 2024, at the height of the dry season, I began painting on Larrakia Country in the Top End of the Northern Territory, Australia. I was flying up to visit my best friend of all time, Lili and her partner Stewy. For the last 3 years we have been traveling together in stints across some of the most remote parts of Western Australia. We paint, make music and do what we call "hot girl tribal shit" which usually involves having lots of billy tea, chai, walking lots and connecting to country. It's become a thing we do regularly. 

Lil and Stewy have been traveling full time and currently live in the NT, soon setting off for Queensland. I still live in Perth so I usually fly up to meet them wherever they are. Works super well for me because I get to see everything from a locals perspective instead of traveling and finding out myself where all the good spots are. 

I was sitting outdoors at a wooden table in the bush. The painting evolved through touches of inspiration as we travelled through Litchfield National Park, which encompasses the traditional boundaries of four Aboriginal language groups: Werat, Koongurrukun, Waray, and Mak Mak Marranunggu.

The landscape was filled with stunning vistas, as vast as the eye could see, and as immense as my mind could comprehend. Spectacular river systems and breathtaking waterfalls gushed into larger waterholes. The land was covered in rich shades of green near the waterways, mimicking the magical tropical fairylands of my childhood fantasies. Babbling creeks, where rainbow butterflies and dragonflies filled the spaces between the leaves, contrasted with the dry, hot, yellow bushy sub-tropical country. It’s truly amazing.

We continued through the largest national park in Australia, the ancient Kakadu National Park. The Aboriginal people are called Bininj in the north of the park and Mungguy in the south, though it is said there were originally nine language groups before colonisation; nowadays, about five remain. Kakadu looked similar to Litchfield in many ways, but had a different energy. I think this is because Kakadu has a stronger Indigenous presence and history, which made it extra special. Kakadu is huge—half the size of Switzerland!—and it’s hard to fathom just how immensely large this national park is. We drove for hours in one direction, with nothing but bushland and rivers in sight. We saw herds of wild horses, donkeys, water buffalo, and a few cows. It was here that I saw my first big saltwater crocodiles in the iconic outback Australian country, swimming in their murky green water, also known as “crocy” water at Cahills crossing - boarding Arnhem Land.

I was amazed when I flew into Darwin from Perth because I saw the colours from the sky—how fabulously they complemented each other. Nature is inspiring! Turquoise blue oceans, dense green trees with flashes of fluorescent green, massive crocy rivers, and orange-dark brown sand plains all came together in the most delicious looking pallet.. Me just drooling on the plane..

Then to be travelling through this land for seven days on foot - was a truly special and breathtaking experience. I often found myself imagining what it would have been like to walk and live among these lands before colonisation. I saw ancient rock art, with signs stating they were 20,000 years old, but I had a feeling they were much, much older. I was also captivated by the pure, clean, and rich smell of the land when I first ventured out into the bush. It was the purest “hot earth” scent—amazing.

When I started this painting in Wagait Beach, it was the day after I had flown into Darwin. Although I had only seen very little of the land at that point, I already felt the immense potency of the old Territory. I had a large canvas with some handprints on it and a base of earth sands that I had painted in a rain storm some months before.I left it raw and unprimed.

My sister Lili (aka Neela) and I cut the canvas in half and shared this once single canvas to create a sister piece together on Country. I had painted about 60% of this work before we left to explore the national parks, and it was guiding me to paint differently from my usual style. Mandalas are my typical style, but I also incorporated influences from the spirits, animals, and plants around me. The centrepiece of the circle and petals was the first part I created.

I didn’t have a clear vision for this painting before starting—I just began. Once I had created the circle and petal-like shapes, I felt like I was tuning into some sort of spiritual guidance, though I wasn’t exactly sure “what it was” until Neela said it looked like the Desert Rose. I replied, “Desert Rose?” She said it’s the symbol on the Northern Territory flag. I instantly googled it and was amazed at just how similar it looked to what I had painted on the canvas before me. Sitting to my right on the long wooden chair was, in fact, a Desert Rose plant that Neela and Stewy (Neela’s beloved partner) had, but it hadn’t flowered yet. When we got back from our time on Country, the Desert Rose was in full bloom.

I continued painting, feeling into the land and the natural world around me. I didn’t try to copy or depict it in its already grown manifestation but rather sought to immerse myself in it so that any visions of different forms would naturally come forth from deeper within my creative consciousness. The ocean “spoke” to me, saying, “I want to be in this too,” as if a child was feeling left out. I giggled and said, “Yes, okay, of course.” That was the light blue that came into the painting. I then felt called to mix two colours together—a brown and a blue—without any preconception of what those blends would produce.

To my surprise, I created the most perfect crocy green colour, exactly like the reflections of all the rivers around here. I was pleased.

I then added black to represent the charred land resulting from ongoing bushfires and burn-offs, which are a huge part of life in the Northern Top End. After six months of the dry season, at the end of the year, the North is flooded with heavy rains that mark the arrival of the relieving wet season. Before coming to Darwin, I hadn’t seen such controlled fires before; where I grew up, smoke on the horizon usually meant danger. But up here, it’s how the land has thrived for thousands of years. The flashes of fluorescent green I saw flying into Darwin were all the new vibrant healthy regrowth of cycads, eucalyptus trees, and wispy palms after the fires. In Kakadu, we learned how important these fires are to maintaining balanced and thriving ecosystems. Without the fires, many of the plants wouldn’t flourish as they do. It’s absolutely fascinating that both extremes are necessary for life to continue thriving—a nice reminder of polarity and the yin-yang equilibrium.

This painting has many aspects, and many more open to interpretation by others. The inner rings of the mandala represent the rings inside a tree hollowed out by termites. Small to tall castle-like termite mounds are common sights everywhere, and it was incredible to see a new type called ‘Magnetic Termites,’ which build their mounds aligned with the North-South magnetic field of the Earth. This positioning helps keep them cool in the heat of the day. They’re very smart little builders—like ants and bees. I saw pink and brown squiggle marks from white ants on the underside of bark that wraps around the wood of a branch or tree, leaving behind beautiful patterns. To me, these patterns resemble the way a riverbed looks from the sky, mirroring the engravings in the wood. The larger symbols that stand on either side of the Desert Rose represent the river (female) and the sea (male)—an ode to both the Shiva and Shakti masculine/feminine cores of creation, their essences coming together in perfect harmony to start, sustain, and end all life.

As I finished this painting, after watching a tiny black ant crawl across the canvas, a thought struck me: There are rivers everywhere.

There is the river as we commonly know it—water flowing from the mainland to the sea, in perfect snakelike bends and turns. But there are also rivers of many other things if we choose to look closely. For example, a river can be seen in a line of ants walking single file from their source, branching out to find food and water. Rivers can be found in trees, with termites moving up and down the trunk, or with water running through the bark from roots to leaves and back down again. Rivers flow through our very bodies, in the veins and arteries that carry blood to our muscles and then back to the heart. There are rivers that make their way from the source to every living thing we can touch, smell, see, taste, and hear. There is a pulse—a river—of water. Life is water.

The gold in this painting represents the alchemy that water brings us—healing, life, cleansing, protection, transmutation, and change. The sight of golden sparkles on the water’s surface when the sun hits it is one of my favourite things to see.

I hope you enjoyed reading about this painting. 

With lots of love and gratitude, 

Namaste Mahatma.