Haast's Bluff is found some 240 kilometres west of Alice Springs, in the midst of the West MacDonnell Ranges. The community's indigenous name, Ikuntji, means "where creeks cross". It is a place of beautiful, even spectacular scenery, where the play of light on the distant mountains is constantly shifting, and changing colour.

Ikuntji was a late starter in the art game. During the 1970s-80s its aspiring artists decamped to nearby Papunya. More people left because of the outstation movement and returned to their ancestral lands. The turning point came in 1992, when the artist, Marina Strocchi was invited to help set up the Ikuntji Women's Centre, from which a large and diverse group of artists emerged, including Mitjili Naparrula, Alice Nampitjinpa, Daisy Napaltjarri Jugadai and Narputta Nangala.

Although male artists such as Long Tom Japanangka are also associated with Haast's Bluff, it is the women who have established the community's reputation, and their works have been seen in many solo or group exhibitions in Australia and abroad. At first sight, a group exhibition from Ikuntji can be slightly bewildering because individual approaches vary so widely. Alongside traditional 'dot and circle' paintings, there may be lush, naïve landscapes, or quite pale, minimal pictures.

Alison Multa is one of the new generation of artists to emerge from this area. Her husband, Gordon Butcher, is the bass player in the Warumpi Band, who had a hit with the anthem-like song, Blackfella/whitefella. They have three children, the two eldest already married.

Multa is not only one of the most promising painters in Haast's Bluff, she teaches at the local school, and has even flown to Hamilton Island to do a master-class in digital photography. She has since become the unofficial community photographer. On the weekend we visited, a lot of friends and relatives were coming into town for the regular football matches played between communities. Multa was going to take photographs, download them on to the computer and show the kids at school next week.

Multa's other activities mean that she doesn't paint as often as the older artists who can devote themselves more wholeheartedly to this kind of work. "I do painting about one day a week, from morning till three o'clock, and when I have free time," she says. "I like to be with the old ladies at the art centre. I talk to them and we're happy painting together."

Multa's distinction is that she paints in several different styles, and is always trying out new motifs. "The old ladies always paint the same thing," she says. "But not me, I like to do lots of different paintings."

While her Dreaming - or Tjukurrpa - is the moon, Multa is attracted to other subjects because of the possibility of using strong, dazzling colour. She has painted a series of bushfire pictures where a predominantly red palette is tempered by flickers of yellow. There are large, deep blue pictures of the stars in the sky, and small yellow canvases of tadpoles wiggling in the water. Other pictures use conventional symbols familiar from Papunya painting, or shimmering, horizontal layers of colour.

Few indigenous painters are so unpredictable or so consistently willing to experiment. "Before I do a painting," Multa says, "I see it in my head. When I'm sleeping or when I close my eyes I'll see this painting, and I just have to do it. I've been thinking of doing one of a rainbow at night."

Multa has the true artist's instinct. When asked if she prefers being a teacher to being a painter she replies: "I want to be everything!"

John McDonald

View the full list of artists photographed by R. Ian Lloyd