My people have always felt the need to express themselves through painting, now and since the beginning of time.
Our sacred rocks are covered with these painting which tell of the "Dreamtime".
There, we can see representations of the creator god Baiame in all his forms,
and what the world of our ancestors was like, thousands of years ago.
Our art, now called aborigine art by the white man's tourist industry,
is born from the dreams of each artist and the intense colours we see in our land.
Each painter tries to express in his work certain dreams which belong to him, or to his Moiety, or mystic society,
but he will have to ask for permission if he wants to paint someone else's dream.
Through dreams, we can enter the other, parallel world, in which, since the creation, gods, spirits and men have lived together.
The actions carried out in that world are what change and order the world of the living.
That is why every painting contains an internal message which can only be seen by those who have the wisdom to understand it.
Today, commercial paints like water colours and oils are used, on frames and canvases,
though some people continue to produce work with natural pigments, on tree bark.
The women have always been in charge of collecting the elements necessary to make the different colours.
Clays, carbons, kaolin, plants and roots, properly mixed, are the components they use to obtain all the colours of the rainbow.
Some colours can be obtained without needing to mix them, such as ochre and yellow,
which are made by cooking the roots of a bush that grows among the eucalyptuses.
In body painting and ritual decoration the same ideas are expressed as those of the pictures.
Through painting, the past and the present come together, and men have contact with the world beyond.
Dots, circles, crosses and spirals symbolise places or paths in the dream.
They are a kind of religious map.
Almost always, the artist makes reference to especially important moments in our history.
They also depict fantasies related to fabulous beings.
But the being itself is not painted, but rather the image this being transmits to the artist across time and movement.
Other paintings represent totemic animals:
fish, crocodiles, turtles, duckbill platypuses, kangaroos, snakes
these paintings are inspired by the drawings our ancestors left on the sacred rocks.
Man is also represented in our paintings, though at times with the body of an animal.
They are the men who at the beginning of time lived with the spirits and the gods of creation.
Now, our art is exported all around the world.
Foreigners have realised its importance and pay a great deal of money for our paintings,
which are put on display in the major art galleries in cities like London, New York or Paris.