‘I think so.’
‘He drew the human form into nature – so if you look closely, the knots in a mulga tree are eyes, and there’s one of his paintings where the composition of the landscape – the sky, the hills and trees – all shift and morph, so you’re suddenly looking at the figure of a woman lying on the earth.’
‘Wow!’ I tried to picture this. ‘Ever thought of doing something with your art knowledge, Chrissie?’
‘Like, on a quiz show with “Australian artists of the twentieth century” as my pet subject?’ she chuckled.
‘No, I mean, professionally.’
‘Are you kidding me? The guys that run the art world have studied for years to be curators or agents. Who’d want me?’
‘I would,’ I said. ‘You did a great selling job today. Besides, that woman in the gallery didn’t look as if she had a million degrees in art, yet she was running the joint.’
‘True enough. Right, we’re here. Where d’you want to set up?’
Chrissie helped me spread out the blanket and cushions we’d sneaked out of the hotel room. We sat down in the shade of a ghost gum and drank some water.
‘I’ll take a wander for a while, shall I? Leave you be?’
‘Yeah, thanks.’ Unlike the artists in that gallery, I wasn’t anywhere near the stage of being able to paint while someone else watched. I sat cross-legged, with the sheet of paper taped onto the wooden-backed canvas. Panic clutched at me, just as it had every time I’d tried to pick up a paintbrush in the past few months.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the hot air, vaguely scented by a minty, almost medicinal, smell that was coming from the gum tree I was leaning against. I thought of who I was – Pa Salt’s daughter, one of the Seven Sisters themselves – and imagined that I had flown down to earth from the heavens and stepped out of the cave into this magnificent, sunlit landscape . . .
I opened my eyes, dipped my brush into the water bottle, mixed it with some colour and began to paint.
*
‘How ya doing?’
I jumped, nearly spilling the sludge-coloured water in the bottle all over the painting.
‘Sorry, Cee. You were lost in your own little world, weren’t ya?’ Chrissie apologised as she bent to stand the water bottle back upright. ‘You hungry yet? You’ve been painting for a good coupla hours.’
‘Have I?’ I felt drowsy, as though I’d just woken up from a deep sleep.
‘Yeah. I’ve been sitting in the car with the air con on full blast for the past forty minutes. Strewth, it’s hot out here. I brought ya a bottle of cold water from the car.’ Chrissie handed it to me, and I gulped back the liquid, feeling disorientated. ‘Well?’ Chrissie regarded me quizzically.
‘Well what?’
‘How’d it go?’
‘Er . . .’
I couldn’t answer, because I didn’t know. I looked down at the paper resting on my knees and was amazed to see that what looked like a fully formed painting had somehow arrived onto it.
‘Wow, Cee . . .’ Chrissie peered over my shoulder before I had time to stop her. ‘Just . . . wow! Oh my God!’ She clasped her hands together in delight. ‘I knew it! That’s bloody amazing! Especially considering you’ve only got that crappy little tin of watercolours to work with.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ I said as I studied the picture. ‘I haven’t got the perspective of the MacDonnell Ranges quite right, and the sky is a bit of a muddy blue because I must have run out of clean water at some point.’
But even as I looked at it, I knew that it was far and away the best watercolour I’d ever painted.
‘Is that a cave?’ Chrissie had crouched down next to me. ‘It looks like there’s a shadowy figure standing in the entrance.’
I looked closer and saw she was right. There was a blurry cloud of white, like a wisp of smoke coming out of a chimney. ‘Yeah.’ I said, though I couldn’t really remember painting it.
‘And those two gnarly bits on the ghost gum’s bark – they look like eyes secretly watching the figure. Cee! You only went and did it!’ Chrissie threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly.
‘Did I? I’ve no idea how.’
‘That doesn’t matter. The point is, you did do it.’
‘Well, it does matter if I ever want to do it again. And it’s definitely not perfect.’ As always when people told me I was good at something, my critical eye began to examine it more closely and see its faults. ‘Look, the gum tree branches are unbalanced, and the leaves are really splodgy and not quite the right green. And—’
‘Whoa!’ Chrissie drew the painting from my knee and out of my reach as if she was afraid I was about to rip it to shreds. ‘I know artists are their own worst critics, but it’s down to the audience ta decide whether it’s good or bad. And as I’m the audience and a secret art boffin, especially on paintings like this, I am telling you that you just painted something great. I gotta take a piccie of this, have you got your camera?’
‘Yeah, in the car.’
After taking a number of photographs, we packed up and headed back to town. All the way to the Alice, Chrissie talked about the painting. In fact, she didn’t just talk about it, she analysed it to death.
‘The most exciting thing of all is that ya took Namatjira’s style and made it your own. That little wisp coming outta the cave, the eyes hidden in the tree, watching it, the six clouds sailing off into the sky . . .’
‘I was thinking about when your granny told me the Dreamtime story of the Seven Sisters just before I started to paint,’ I admitted.
‘I knew it! But I didn’t want to say so until you did. Somehow, just like Namatjira, you managed to paint another layer into a gorgeous landscape. But in your own way, Cee. He used symbols, and you’ve used a story. It’s awesome! I’m rapt!’
I sat there next to her, half enjoying her praise and half wishing she’d shut up. I understood she was trying to be supportive, but my cynical voice told me that however knowledgeable she seemed to be on Namatjira, she was hardly an art expert. And beyond that, if the painting did show promise, could I ever replicate it again?
She parked the car along the main street, and we went back to the café where we’d had the good kangaroo. I ordered burgers for us as I listened to her rabbit on.
‘You’re gonna have ta learn to drive, because you need ta go out there again. And I’ve got to fly back to Broome early tomorrow morning.’ Her eyes darkened. ‘I really don’t wanna. I love the Alice. So many people told me bad stories about it, about the problems between us lot and the whites. And yeah, I’m sure some of them are true, but the art movement here is just amazing, and we haven’t even started on Papunya yet.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Another school of art that came just after Namatjira’s time. Like, most of the dot paintings you saw in the gallery earlier.’
I tried to suppress an almighty yawn, but failed miserably. I didn’t understand why I felt so exhausted.
‘Listen, why don’t you go back to the hotel and grab a kip?’ she suggested.