YIRAWALA

Painted at Minjilang, Croker Island, Western Arnhem Land in the 1960s
Jerome Gould, Los Angeles
Private collection

The bark is attached to a lightweight stretcher and has a number of harirline cracks in the surface and a number of fine splits along the frame on the upper and lower edges. The pigments are generally in a good and stable condition although there are some areas of minor pigment loss in some areas of the painting
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The documentation on the reverse states that, "The painting represents a 'ceremonial drawing showing the great python killing and eating the two sisters and a child'.

Cf. For related paintings in the collection of  the National Gallery of Australia, see Holmes, S. Le Brun, Yirawala: Painter of the Dreaming, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1994, pl.119, 120. See also Serpent Swallowing Wagilak Sisters, and Wallaby, c.1968, in the collection of the Australian Museum, in Sutton, P. (ed), Dreamings. The art of Aboriginal Australia, Viking, Melbourne, in association with The Asia Society Galleries, New York, 1988, p.42, fig.64; and Katjailen the serpent devouring the child, n.d., in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, in Isaacs, J., Australia's Living Heritage, Lansdowne, Sydney, 2000, p.194, illus.

A regional variation on the Wagilag Sisters story that originates in the east and finds its apotheosis at Mirrarmina in central Arnhem Land, the encounter between the Sisters and the Giant Python shown here follows the pictorial conventions used in the east to depict the Serpent devouring the ancestors.