Locals know the story… see the Todd River flow three times, and you will be here forever.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve watched the water come from the north and flush the dry river bed… its definitely in multiples of three now. Still there is a sense of occasion. The event brings everyone together. We meet at the river to watch and splash, to picnic and reminisce. A time of fun and hope and renewal.

It’s also my third exhibition on these beautiful walls.

I face writing the blurb for this catalogue with trepidation. Too shy to ask anyone to write something for me, unsure that I have anything interesting to say. As usual at this time, a few weeks out from my opening, full of self doubt. Why do I do this? I know why I paint… I can’t not. It is a physical, emotional need… but the whole exhibition thing?

I have a busy life. A lucky, full rewarding life. But I do need ‘DUE DATES’ otherwise I am a grand procrastinator. I need the pressure of an exhibition to get things finished. In the weeks before a show, I dream of arriving at the gallery to find my name on the door and white walls. Empty. (A bit like the dream of going to school and realising you’ve forgotten to put undies on!) Horrendous.

There is something REALLY affirming about seeing your paintings on beautiful well-lit walls. Of seeing them together. It’s the full stop on a very long sentence. Allows you to start a new chapter. During COVID (remember that?) I had a show that I couldn’t get to due to travel bans. In my head it is like it didn’t happen.

These days I paint every day that I am home. It is a compulsion. It puts my head somewhere else. But for me more than the painting, it’s the seeing, the noticing. Not just the famous places but my neighbourhood, my 5 minute commute to work, the places I stop for a stretch or a pee on my way to a remote community. No excuse for boredom nor complacency. Humbled by the landscape and by the many thousands of years that people have called this place their home. The layers of meaning and story.

I started drawing and painting ‘seriously’ when I was 14. In Maryborough, QLD, I had my first show on my 16^th birthday. Early success and some money, commissions. That’s forty years ago now! I’ve not always had a lot of time to paint, but always time to look and an ache of something missing when work or kids or exhaustion has affected my ability to ‘get some paint out’.

When I was a kid I worked in pen and ink and watercolours. This continued into my 20s. but when I arrived in Alice 22 years ago after 10 years out bush as a remote nurse, I didn’t think I was going to be able to capture the essence of the country in watercolours and paper. I’m no Albert!

Acrylics and canvas seemed the go and better suited to be able to start and stop… 3 kids and work! Now I seem to have developed my own style… I’ve tried to mix it up, paint like Lloyd Rees before his cataract operation, but it doesn’t work. I can’t fight it.

For the last twenty two years I have worked for the Pintupi people, helping to establish the Purple House in Mbantua and remote dialysis in communities. It will be 21 years of dialysis on country this year and we now have 20 dialysis units in remote communities in NT, WA and SA. It is immensely challenging and rewarding work. It can also be frustrating, heart breaking and exhausting. It could take over every aspect of my life. Painting is a foil, an added pressure (due dates) but also helps me prioritise something else.

So, I don’t see the country as a new comer anymore, and there are memories of people and battles for better health services embedded in many of these paintings, but I also come as a guest, a visitor, who wasn’t born here and can only glimpse the significance of this country to those whose land it is and always will be. Unceded and proudly theirs.

By Sarah Brown