Raylene Larry

Raylene Larry is an accomplished artist and 2022 Tjarlirli and Kaltukatjara Art Director who lived in Kaltukatjara. She was grown up and has spent most of her life in Docker River, though she also travels to Areyonga (Utju) and Alice Springs regularly. Raylene is a lively presence wherever she goes, always cracking jokes, chatting to anyone and practicing her dancing skills whenever one of the local bush bands are playing!

The story which Raylene depicts is the ‘Kungka Kutjara’ story, an important dreaming to the women of Kaltukatjara. It follows the journey of two sisters across the desert landscape. Raylene tells this story through a repeating pattern of square motifs which dance across the canvas in varying colour combinations and dizzying linework. The colours she selects are reflected in the country she sees around her – reds and oranges for the dirt, yellows and beiges for the tjanpi (grasses), blue for the water in the rockholes and soakages, and green for the trees and plants. While the desert may seem barren to some, Raylene sees a landscape teeming with life, and tangibly marked by the actions of ancestral creator beings such as the Kungka Kutjara.