Jarinyanu David Downs painted himself, Jarinyanu Dancing at Broome Festival, in 1990. He used natural earth pigments and synthetic polymer paint on an unframed linen canvas approximately 1.1 m tall and 84 cm wide.

The deep orange-ochre ground the work is painted on shows as a border around the edges of the canvas. Within it, a narrow rectangle, about 2 cm wide, has been painted freehand in black. Along the top edge and part way down the right side are short black lines poking inwards, each ending in a round black mass. They start small in the top left and grow larger.

Within the borders, the background of orange-ochre is covered in small yellow and grey dots.

Jarinyanu stands in the centre, a simplified black figure with round eyes and a wide mouth. He is decorated with grey and white markings, a band around his forehead, curved mirrored chest markings, a groin covering and stripes upon each upper thigh.

He is positioned straight on, arms raised to a long black beam running horizontally under his chin. It spans almost the entire width of the canvas. The beam is surrounded by finer vertical grey lines tipped with grey dots.

Filling the bottom of the portrait around Jarinyanu’s feet is a semi-circle of rows of numerous small black seated figures with round heads and outstretched arms.

Audio description written and voiced by Lucinda Shawcross