Sharon Adamson b. 1995

Sharon Adamson burst onto the Aboriginal art scene as a teenager, creating works far beyond her years, in a style reminiscent of her great-grandfather Tiger Palpatja (1920-2012). Sharon paints the same Dreaming as her great-grandfather, depicting the creation spirit, Wanampi - Rainbow Serpent.

The Rainbow Serpent is one of the most widely known Dreaming stories and is retold in many different forms across many Aboriginal language groups. The Rainbow Serpent is recognised as an ancient, powerful creature of the Dreaming Creation era, whose movements brought form to the previously featureless landscape - creating certain mountains, gorges, rivers and valleys. For Pitjantjatjara people, Wanampi are powerful spirits, believed to live in and guard waterholes. With their intimate knowledge of their ancestral country, Pitjantjatjara people know the resting places of the Wanampi, and continue to practice traditional methods of communicating with spirits to show respect and ask permission before accessing certain water sources.

Sharon loves to use bright colours when she paints as she moves her brush across the canvas with great flourishing strokeds. Her paintings are also representative of a topographical view of the land she lives on, depicting the different landforms like creek beds and rockholes where the Wanampi live, and the regions where certain bush foods grow.

Hailing from the remote artistic region of Amata in the APY Lands, the vitality of Sharon’s artworks is astounding. Sharon is now regarded very highly and has had major exhibitions both nationally and internationally, and her works have been collected in major public and private collections. Most recently, Sharon and fellow artist Barbara Mbitjana Moore participated in an artist residency at the prestigious Kluge-Ruhe Foundation in Charlottesville, West Virginia, USA which culminated in an amazing exhibition of their work at the completion of the residency.