Stories from Country: Our New Works on Paper Collection
Walking across land to look for bush flowers and goanna. Driving along the road towards the hill, watching flowers bloom on the side of the road, the strong gum trees coming into view near the hills. These are the stories that live inside the new Aboriginal works on paper collection from Artists of Ampilatwatja.
Every painting made by an Alyawarre artist begins long before the brush touches the surface. It begins on Country. In the act of walking, hunting, gathering, observing the land through seasons and rain and heat. The works in this new collection are paintings of lived experience, not imagination. When Julieanne Ngwarraye Morton paints Alpeyt Alpeyt, Flowers Blooming, she is painting the walk she took that morning. When Kathleen Nanima Rambler paints Mulangke Aherne, Beautiful Land, she is painting what she sees through the window as she drives towards the hills of her Country.
That connection to place is what makes work from this community so distinct. The dots, the waterholes, the bush medicines, the desert flowers, these are not decorative choices. They are a language, developed over generations, for describing a specific piece of land and the knowledge held within it.
Paintings that Invite You Close
Our Works on paper have a particular quality to them. Smaller in scale than a stretched canvas, more intimate, more immediate, they invite you to lean in and look carefully. To notice the layering of marks, the way colour builds across the surface, the concentration of detail that emerges the closer you get.
The works in this collection carry all of the themes that have always defined art from Ampilatwatja. Bush medicine, country after rain, flowers and grasses that push up through the desert. But at this scale there is a focus and an intimacy to them that feels newly immediate.
Our aboriginal works on paper are also a more accessible entry point for first time collectors. A work on paper is no less meaningful and no less carefully made than a large canvas painting. It simply asks for a different kind of wall space, a different kind of attention.
Made to Last
The works in this collection are painted on Khadi paper, handmade in Karnataka, South India from 100% recycled cotton rag. Each sheet is made by hand, one at a time, and surface sized with gelatine in the traditional method used for watercolour paper. It creates a hard, water resistant surface that allows paint to be worked across it without sinking in.
Khadi paper is genuinely acid free, meaning works painted on it will not yellow or degrade over time. No bleaches or harmful chemicals are used in its production, and the water used in the papermaking process is fully recycled. For a community of artists whose practice is rooted in care for Country, it felt like the right surface to paint on.
A work on paper purchased from Artists of Ampilatwatja today will still be in excellent condition decades from now.
Buying Directly from the Artists
Artists of Ampilatwatja is an Aboriginal-owned and governed corporation, established in 1999 on Aherrenge country, 325 kilometres north east of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. When you purchase directly from us, the artist is paid fairly and you receive full provenance, artist details, and a certificate of authenticity.
You are not buying a reproduction or a licensed print. You are buying an original painting, made by hand, by an Alyawarre woman who walked her country and brought that experience back to the art centre to paint.
That is what these beautiful Aboriginal works on paper are. Paintings of a specific place, a specific walk, a specific morning out on country. We hope you find one that speaks to you.