Geraldine Riley, Aboriginal Artist

Geraldine Riley is a Warlpiri artist from the remote community of Willowra, situated some 340km north-west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs) in the rugged Tanami desert.

Geraldine was born in 1974 at Mount Doreen Station, in the Warlpiri country north-west of Yuendumu, and her skin name is Napangardi. She spent her childhood learning the traditional ways of her Country before moving with her family to Yuendumu in her early teens — a classic Warlpiri upbringing in which the knowledge of plants, water and ceremony came first, and it shows in what she paints. Art also runs in the family: she is the niece of Towser Jagamara and Daisy Nabaldjari, both well-regarded artists of the region. Alongside her bush flower works, Geraldine holds and paints Women's Ceremony and Ngapa, the Water Dreaming — the storm and soakage-water story that is among the most important of Warlpiri Country.

Geraldine paints the wild bush flowers that decorate the landscape of her ancestral country. In the arid desert climate, native botanicals are treasured by Aboriginal people for the abundance they bring. Flowering plants can be used for medicinal purposes, or are important sources of bush tucker - either by producing nutritious fruit or providing habitat for other food sources, such as honey ants that nest in the roots of mulga trees.

Many of the flowers in Geraldine's paintings are those of the acacias — the wattles and mulgas whose blossoms turn the Tanami gold after rain. For desert women these trees are a storehouse: the flowers, seeds, leaves and pods are all collected, some for food and some for bush medicine, and the knowledge of where each species grows and when it can be gathered is passed from older women to younger during women's business — the same transmission of knowledge that underlies Geraldine's right to paint them. Her flower paintings have also travelled beyond the gallery wall: a Central Australian distillery features her bush flower artwork on its native-botanical Desert Rose gin.

Geraldine's style of painting comprises of the repetition of fine small dots and thin lines, mapping delicate flowers from a bird's eye point-of-view. Geraldine has a meticulous hand, creating a lattice of intricate patterns that unfurl across her canvases. Geraldine prefers to paint either in a monochromatic or reduced colour palette, creating high-contrast, striking works.