Death Dreaming

Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri’s Death Dreaming was originally part of the collection of Geoffrey Bardon, the school teacher who encouraged Papunya’s men to take up painting. It depicts a ceremonial performance in which a skeleton dancer moves between two designs based on ground paintings. The ceremony and painting relate to an ancestral story of a fatal dispute after one man refuses to hunt with another – a moral message of mutual responsibility for desert survival.

To create the effect of smoke or cloud, the Anmatyerre painter used washovers and dotting onto wet grounds, suggesting a familiarity with watercolour techniques.

Leura had previously worked alongside his cousin Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa, who had indeed painted in watercolours in the style of Albert Namatjira, as well as in a style based on traditional mark-making. With another cousin, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Leura later joined the Western Desert painters of Papunya.

Barry Patton, Tarnanthi Writer & Researcher