Jarinyanu David Downs, 1986

Jarinyanu David Downs (c. 1925-1995), Wangkajunga-Walmajarri painter, printmaker and preacher, lived a traditional life in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia until he was a young man. Moving to the Northern Territory in the late 1940s, he worked as a drover and miner. He converted to Baptist Christianity in the mid-1960s, and became a church elder at Fitzroy Crossing. Shortly after this he began to make shields, boomerangs and coolamons decorated with ochre; he began painting figuratively on paper, shields and canvas in the early 1980s. One of his repeated themes is the Kurtal, to do with the snake spirit who takes the form of a man, travels across the land and brings rain. However, many of his paintings include Christian imagery, and some combine his traditional stories and personal experiences with Baptist stories; his body of work expresses his philosophy that we ‘gotta make ’em whole lot one family’. Downs was represented in many group exhibitions in the 1980s and 1990s. The National Gallery of Victoria holds fifteen of his works and the Art Gallery of Western Australia has one of his very large paintings of Kurtal.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2005
© Martin van der Wal