LENT Photo #14 'Gathering'

   This is the painting that hangs in our entranceway at home and is an aboriginal artwork on canvass stretched over a frame. I bought it in Adelaide in 2005 at our UCA national youth event on the last morning for a few hundred dollars as a gift... I was grateful to the Community Worker for the Northern Synod contingent who sought me out on the balcony soon after the purchase, to thank me that whilst I had collected a bargain, he wanted me to know that by buying one of the three canvasses hanging up unframed, I had provided the petrol money for a group to head back home...
   The artwork is about women gathering bush tucker food for the group gathering... you can make out the ants and the witchetty grubs in the green X shaped pathways, the white snakes and the U shaped figures are the gatherers. It's a wonderful rich story of role, tradition and community life.