The epic tale associated with the artist’s homeland, Mina Mina, recounts the vast travels of the Karnta Kurlangu, the large group of ancestral women who journeyed during the earth’s creation first toward the east, then to the north, then south collecting plants and foods with both medicinal and ceremonial uses.

These powerful ancestral women were involved in initiation ceremonies and made hair string belts to carry their babies and possessions. The human hair-string spun and rubbed with special red ochre and fat was part of their magic just as it is with women to this day when performing ceremonies that connect them with their Dreaming.

The tall desert oaks that grow in the artist’s country to this day, symbolise the emergence of digging sticks that literally rose up out from beneath the ground thereby equipping the women for their vast travels as they visited many sites, resting at some, going underground at others and later re-emerging and morphing into different, sometimes malevolent, beings.

Judy Watson’s paintings related to the travels of the Karntakurlangu , compel the spectators eye to dance across the painted surface, just as the ancestral women danced in their hundreds across the country during the region’s creation.