We met Athena painting alongside her sisters under the tutelage of her grandmother - renowned artist Alma Nungarrayi Granites. She is the great grand-daughter of Paddy Japaljarri Sims (deceased), one of the instrumental senior men in the painting of the now-famous Yuendumu school doors, as well as one of the founders of the art centre in 1985.
Athena says “I learnt to paint by watching my mother, my sisters and my grandmother paint.”
A successful younger generation artist, she uses the skills and techniques of elder artists, as well as embracing new methods she’s developed as her artistic practice evolves. Alma was no doubt hugely influential in her use of a broad range of colours and stylistic techniques including a hair brush to achieve the the sense of distant stars and galaxies.
In the desert, where you are removed from light pollution, you can see the many pops of colours in the sky reiterated in these paintings. Athena’s work is utterly compelling, bewitching people as it takes them to the Pleaides and the story of the Seven Sisters Dreaming.
The story is not unique to the Aboriginal culture but sits across many others from Egyptian and Greek mythology (where the name Pleiades comes from), as well as Indian and African folklore. It may be the oldest story in the world given it exists among cultures spanning the world. There is a theory it came out of Africa 100,000 year ago when humanity started migrating north.
Athena is one of the most important emerging artists from the Central Desert in Australia and this is the perfect time to invest in her work, if you love it and it speaks to you.
Athena painting at the Yuendumu art centre in the Northern Territory.
