Jarinyanu David Downs

Jarinyanu David Downs (c. 1925–1995), Wangkajunga/Walmajarri painter, printmaker and preacher, lived a traditional life in the Great Sandy Desert of West Australia until he was a young man. Moving to the Northern Territory in the late 1940s, he worked as a drover and miner, before relocating to Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia. He converted to Baptist Christianity in the mid-1960s, and became a church elder. Shortly after this he began to make shields, boomerangs and coolamons decorated with ochre; he started to paint figuratively on paper, shields and canvas in the early 1980s. One of his repeated themes is the Kurtal, the snake spirit who takes the form of a man, travels across the land and brings rain. However, many of his paintings include Christian imagery, and some combine his traditional stories and personal experiences with Baptist stories; his body of work expresses his philosophy that we 'gotta make 'em whole lot one family'. Downs was represented in many group exhibitions in the 1980s and 1990s, and his work is held by the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. In 2016, the exhibition Jarinyanu David Downs, Kurtal as Self, held in the artist's community of Fitzroy Crossing, was the first show of his works since his death in 1995.