In this painting, Yingarrda Wadjarri artist Sonya Edney paints her country in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia after spring rain has transformed the landscape. Spring rains have filled the waterholes and there is a proliferation of different coloured wildflowers spreading across the red earth. The usually dry claypans turn into wet soakages. When this happens the ground water attracts birds, insects and animals and the previously barren claypans become alive with life. The earth is also covered in wildflowers that have come up as a result of the rains.

Sonya recalls, “As children we spent a lot of time at the waterholes around Gascoyne Junction. Dad would go off to hunt kangaroo and the first thing we would do was to go out and get wood to make a fire.”

$6600