lsn 105

Artist: Linda Syddick

Location: Lake MacKay, WA

Size 75cm x 120cm

Acrylic on canvas

2004

Linda has painted the Lake MacKay area as a topographical map as it might be seen from the air. She has depicted the ancestral spirit beings, the Emu Men by their tracks as they dance around the lake. The background lines indicate the rows of high vegetated sand hills in the Lake MacKay area.

Lake MacKay in the Western Desert:

Lake MacKay is a large dry salt lake which straddles the WA-NT border, north-west of Kintore. Occasionally it fills with water and becomes blue, “like sea water” When it happens birds and animals flock to the area. Linda was born at Lake MacKay. She walked out of the desert with her family when she was eight or nine years old. It was a long journey, up and down sand hills. After many weeks of walking they reached the Lutheran Mission at Haasts Bluff, NT

The Emu Men

The Emu Men were ancestral spirit beings who roamed the landscape during the Dreamtime or Creation Period. The Emu was the totem of her father, Rintje Tjungurrayi, and of her step-father, Langkata Shorty Tjungurrayi, one of the famous artists at Papunya who started the dot painting movement of the Western Desert