During the war, teenaged Lily Karedada and husband Jack, made the long walk north to Kalumburu, where they lived in a cave in the adjacent hills for many months, waiting out the Japanese bombing raids on the mission, before moving in. Specializing in painting the Wandjina, Karedada usually depicts the icon in a veil of dots representing the rain generated by the spirit, and the blood/water bond between man and nature. The Wandjina are powerful ancestors of the Woonambal tribe (that Karedada belongs to). They are spirits of the sky and are associated with rain, thunderstoms, and the coming of the wet season. Karedada almost exclusively portrays the Wandjina figure from a frontal aspect. The icon is usually seen with a range of animals and/or it is pictured in the landscape. Her main mediums are painting with natural ochres and bush gum fixative on canvas, bark, didgeridu, coolaman, bark bush-buckets, (garagi) carvings on slate rock and tapping sticks.

Karedada's bush-name is Mindundel, meaning ‘bubbles‘, named at birth by her father, because she was born near a bubbling spring.

The artist has spent her life in Kalumburu with Jack. Somewhere between painting and carving, she dotes on her many ‘grannies‘, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Biography courtesy of Narrangunny Art Traders, Wyndham, Australia

Community Leader, Laborer

Kalumburu

wife of and collaborated with Jack Karedada skin group sister of Rosie Karedada skin group sister of Louis Karedada skin group sister of Manila Karedada sister of Geoffrey Mangalamarra aunt of Richard Karedada

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Die Kunst der Australisch en Ureinwohner lebt, Museum fur Volerkunde, Leipzig, Germany & Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde, Dresden, Germany (1981)

Dreaming Their Way: Australian Aboriginal Women Painters

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