Awelye – (Women’s Ceremony)

The bold linear pattern of stripes and curves throughout Minnie’s painting, illustrates women’s ceremonial body paint design. After smearing their bodies with animal fat, the women trace these designs onto their breasts, arms and a thigh singing as each woman takes her turn to be ‘painted-up’. Their songs relate to the dreaming stories of ancestral travel and other totemic plants, animals and natural forces. Awelye – women’s ceremony, demonstrates respect for the land. In performing these ceremonies they ensure well-being and happiness with their communities.

Though Minnie enjoys using lots of vivid colours in her paintings, the traditional colours used during ceremony for her dreaming stories, from Atnwengerrp County, are red and white. Atnwengerrp lies in the heartland of Alyawarr country, about 200 kilometres to the north-east of Alice Springs.