Extract from book
ILLISTRATED An illustration of this work and accompanying notes including a copy of the original field note and drawing of the time by Geoffrey Bardon, as well as a photograph of the artist by Allan Scott can be found in Geoffrey Bardon and James Bardon Papunya, A Place Made After the Story, The Beginnings of the Western Desert Painting Movement, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2004, p372 Johnny Scobie worked as a stockman and drover in central Australia before settling at Papunya. This work is believed to be the only painting that he created during the Bardon years. When he took up painting in earnest in the 1980s his works were of outstanding quality and differed in their interpretation of the Dreaming stories from those of his contemporaries. In this painting Johnny Scobie has set out the women’s dancing ceremony at a place west of Sandy Blight Junction in Western Australia. Here women’s ceremonial motifs are presented for the dancing ritual. The paths of the dancers are elegantly and symmetrically shown by sets of horizontal lines crossing the design. The principal dancer’s footprints are indicated by tracks and a significant women’s sign is included at the top centre; there are also marked ceremonial objects.