Denise Brady – We are Spiritual People – in association with Tjarlirli Art

It’s been about twenty years that I’ve been doing painting, working hard on my paintings. I’m doing paintings to keep me happy, keep me awake, keep me alive and enjoying my life. To be proud of myself, and so I can represent who I am. With this exhibition, it feels like this is it now, I need to tell people who we really are. We are spiritual people, we come from living God. We have a strong heart, and strong feelings. We need to respect each other and care about each other, and that’s my message from these paintings.

When I was in Adelaide for Tarnanthi, I was excited, it felt like I was new there. I didn’t really know what was happening, what was going on. I was running around, with family, shopping! I even lost a bag of fancy clothes because I was running around too much. I like Adelaide. But it felt like I was just a baby, just a new one. I think this Darwin show is going to be really me. Me and my paintings and my story. So, I’m there for it, to talk about it. Let everyone know, so it can keep growing. Darwin, this is my next step. The baby is growing. Growing in what I see and what I feel. I’m looking forward to the things that are coming.

When I do a painting, I don’t know how it works, I can’t really tell you. When you do a painting, it’s like your mind is printing something there. I think all of my paintings are about life. I’m an artist who loves painting true stories, to stamp my stories onto a big canvas for the world to recognise. I want people to know that Anangu culture is still alive, the everyday culture of our lives. Not just Tjukurpa irititja way (Dreaming old time way) – culture is all about feeding my family, looking after them, supporting and encouraging each other and everyone. So Anangu culture is how we live, as Anangu. It’s following the Dreamings, your family tree, family line, you know. Looking after each other, loving one another, respecting. It’s my dream coming true. I want to spread my message to the whole world for them to think about and understand. Mulapa, that’s in our life too. Because in my dream, the voice of God told me to heal many. I’m thinking about how we need to fix all our broken connections, our broken relationships and families and everything.

It’s a time of big changes in my life, and we need big changes to heal the land. I just want to let you know that we are all humans, we have the same spirit that is connected. The good thing is if we can love and help one another, we can work together and respect each other. Maybe we live a bit different, but the heart we have inside is a soft heart. We are all one big happy family, brothers and sisters. Helping each other is a really good thing, it keeps everything balanced and stable. It keeps people healed up, not broken into pieces like jigsaw puzzles. With a puzzle, it’s really hard to put it all back together, so instead of breaking it up into a jigsaw puzzle we need to keep it all in one piece. So I want these to be healing paintings. I think painting is good for this, because my paintings can travel and speak for me and help to heal people in many places. I hope you can understand and keep these things in mind, and I hope you take it and share it with others like I did.

Denise Brady, 2024