Janice Woods b. 1988

Janice Woods was born in Kaltukatjara (Docker River), a remote community near the Western Australia border in the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunyjatjara (APY) Lands of Central Australia, and now lives in the community of Kanpi in South Australia. Janice comes from a very creative family – she is the granddaughter of acclaimed artist, Maringka Baker – and her mother, Elaine Woods, and sisters, Cassyane, Julie, and Venita Woods are all established artists.

Janice tells her own story simply: "I learnt to paint from my grandmother on my mother's side, Maringka Baker, always watching her paint all those lines and circles. I also learnt her tjukurpa story, Minyma Kutjara, which came through my great-grandmother." She completed school to Year 12 at Kanpi, and lives there today with her husband, her young son, and Maringka herself — four generations of the story's custodians under one sky. Her grandmother's standing gives the household its weight: Maringka Baker was a featured artist, alongside the great Jimmy Baker, in the National Gallery of Australia's inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial, Culture Warriors, and it was her marriage to Douglas Baker — Jimmy's cousin — that settled the family at Kanpi.

Like many of her family members, Janice depicts the Minyma Kutjara (Two Women) story in her paintings, a "big story" that intersects many language groups in the Central and Western Desert regions. The songline details the journey of two women as they travel across Country, changing form into animals or elements to pass through certain areas. The movements of the two women create features of the landscape as they walked, rested, and performed ceremony.

In the telling passed down through Janice's family, the two women are sisters making their way home. The younger had been living with another family near the sea far to the south, lost for a long time, and did not know the country; her older sister carried her and comforted her, teaching her the land as they travelled, stopping to perform sacred singing and dancing — and the further they went, the happier the little sister became. They camped at Punuwara and at Irrunytju rockhole before turning north to Kaltukatjara (Docker River), and they were finally home. Janice paints this journey both alone and in collaboration — large canvases painted with her mother Elaine, with her sisters, and with fellow Kanpi artist Francine Kulitja — the shared brushwork itself an echo of the story's heart: an older generation carrying a younger one across Country until it knows the way.

The waterholes and sites where the women camped on their travels are depicted, as well as other topographic details of the country. There are variations to the Minyma Kutjara Dreaming story; Janice captures the textured topography of her own ancestral country in the APY Lands, in particular "Mulpu", the Musgrave Ranges - the reds, oranges and yellows of the rocky outcrops, the undulations of sandhills and rockholes are depicted by Janice in this important story.