The paintings of Lily Karadada are grounded in one of the most enduring visual traditions of the north-west Kimberley.
Large eyes, halo-like forms, radiating lines, rain-like dots, and frontal ancestral figures recur throughout her work. These are Wanjina, powerful ancestral beings associated with rain, fertility, seasonal renewal, and the creation of Country.
Karadada, also known by her bush name Mindindil, grew up in Woonambal Country before later living and working at Kalumburu. Across bark, canvas, slate, painted objects, and other media, she developed a distinctive interpretation of Wanjina imagery while maintaining close connections with the cultural traditions from which it emerged.
Her paintings are immediately recognisable, but their significance lies beyond their visual form. They belong to a living system of Country, ancestry, weather, ceremony, and cultural responsibility.
Who is Lily Karadada?
Lily Karadada was born in the Prince Regent River region of the north-west Kimberley into a Woonambal family.
Her bush name, Mindindil, means “bubbles”. The National Gallery of Victoria records that the name relates to a freshwater spring where her father saw bubbles rising before her birth and understood them as a sign of her arrival.
Art Leven records Karadada’s community as Kalumburu and identifies Wanjina painting as the foundation of her practice.
Her childhood was spent learning directly from Country.
Water.
Plants.
Animals.
Seasonal change.
And the cultural knowledge associated with Wanjina.
These relationships remained central when she later began making work for public exhibition.
Wanjina Country
The Wanjina tradition belongs specifically to the north-west and central Kimberley.
Wanjina are ancestral beings of the Worrorra, Ngarinyin, and Woonambal peoples. Their images appear in rock shelters and caves throughout the region and have been maintained across generations.
The figures are strongly associated with rainmaking and the wet season.
They are often shown frontally.
Large eyes dominate the face.
A halo or radiating structure surrounds the head.
The mouth is absent.
Lines can suggest lightning, storm energy, or rain.
Lily Karadada’s paintings draw on this long-established visual language while remaining recognisably individual.
Painting the Wanjina
The Wanjina figure often dominates Karadada’s compositions.
Rather than being absorbed into a larger landscape, the ancestor can occupy the centre of the painting and confront the viewer directly.
This frontal presence gives the work a particular intensity.
The eyes are prominent.
The face is still.
Around it, dots can fall like rain.
Animals, plants, and other features of Country may appear nearby.
The National Gallery of Victoria describes Karadada’s Wanjina as frequently appearing behind or within a curtain of finely dotted rain, with the ancestral figure maintaining the frontal form associated with rock painting traditions.
That rain is not simply an atmospheric effect.
It reinforces the relationship between Wanjina, water, fertility, and seasonal renewal.
Rain, lightning, and renewal
Water is fundamental to Wanjina imagery.
The ancestors are associated with the wet season, when storms transform the Kimberley landscape.
Clouds gather.
Lightning moves across the sky.
Rain fills creeks and waterholes.
Vegetation responds.
The Art Leven profile connects Wanjina directly with these cycles of fertility and renewal and records the radiating lines surrounding their heads and eyes as part of this storm imagery.
Karadada’s paintings therefore connect ancestral presence with environmental change.
Rain is physical.
It is seasonal.
And it is culturally significant.
The Wanjina sits at the centre of these relationships.
The meaning of the mouthless face
One of the most recognisable characteristics of Wanjina imagery is the absence of a mouth.
Art Leven records a traditional explanation in which the mouth was sealed following the first lightning strike, ensuring that the rain associated with the Wanjina remains balanced rather than destructive.
The mouthless face has become one of the defining visual features of the Wanjina.
In Karadada’s work, it also contributes to the stillness of the figure.
The eyes remain active.
The surrounding patterns move.
Rain falls.
But the face itself is often calm and monumental.
This contrast gives the image much of its power.
Earth pigment and Country
Material is important in Lily Karadada’s work.
She has painted using natural earth pigments, drawing directly on colours collected from Country.
The National Gallery of Victoria holds a 1990 Wanjina made with earth pigments and natural binder on canvas, as well as examples painted on slate.
These materials give the paintings a restrained palette.
White.
Red.
Yellow.
Black.
Soft earth tones.
Rather than limiting the work, the palette places greater emphasis on form, surface, and tonal variation.
The material also reinforces the relationship between image and Country.
The subject comes from Country.
So does the pigment.
Painting on bark
Bark has also been an important surface within Karadada’s practice.
Art Leven currently lists examples of her Wanjina imagery painted in ochre on bark, including works in which the irregular shape of the material becomes part of the composition.
The use of bark connects her public painting practice with a wider history of First Nations painting traditions.
Yet Karadada did not remain restricted to one medium.
Canvas.
Slate.
Bark.
Painted objects.
Different surfaces allowed the Wanjina image to move into new contexts while remaining grounded in the same cultural framework.
Individual style within an inherited tradition
Lily Karadada’s work is part of an inherited Wanjina tradition, but that does not make it anonymous or fixed.
Her paintings have recognisable individual characteristics.
Art Leven describes the pointed shoulders of her figures as reflecting the Wanjina associated with particular cave sites connected to her Country. It also identifies her refined dotted veils of rain and controlled tonal variation as important aspects of her style.
The distinction is important.
Cultural continuity and artistic individuality can exist together.
Karadada works within conventions older than her own career.
But she does not simply reproduce them.
She interprets them.
Animals and accompanying figures
Animals frequently appear alongside the Wanjina in Lily Karadada’s work.
Art Leven records turkey, possum, and white cockatoo among her totemic associations, as well as her connection with the Jirrengar owlet moiety.
These figures situate the Wanjina within a wider living landscape.
The ancestor is not isolated from Country.
Animals.
Water.
Weather.
Rock formations.
Plants.
And human cultural responsibilities all belong within the same system.
Karadada’s paintings often convey this interconnectedness with remarkable economy.
A central Wanjina and a small number of surrounding forms can carry a great deal of cultural information.
Kalumburu and cultural disruption
Karadada’s life also belongs to a period of major disruption in the Kimberley.
The establishment and expansion of the Benedictine mission at Kalumburu altered the lives of Woonambal and other First Nations peoples in the region.
Art Leven records displacement from Country and the suppression of cultural practices, including the ceremonial maintenance of rock paintings.
These changes affected the transmission of cultural life.
Yet the Wanjina tradition continued.
Painting became one of the ways through which knowledge remained visible and could be passed between generations.
Karadada’s career therefore belongs not only to the history of contemporary art, but to a wider history of cultural persistence.
Taking Wanjina painting into galleries
From the 1970s onwards, Kimberley artists increasingly began exhibiting Wanjina paintings within the wider art market.
Art Leven identifies Lily Karadada and her husband Jack Karadada among the early artists to present Wanjina paintings publicly in Perth during this period.
The move was significant.
Images grounded in rock shelters and ceremonial traditions entered galleries and private and institutional collections.
This changed the context in which the work was encountered.
But it also expanded its visibility.
Karadada became one of the artists through whom audiences beyond the Kimberley encountered Wanjina painting as a continuing contemporary practice rather than simply as an ancient rock art tradition.
Continuity across generations
The Karadada family has played an important role in maintaining Wanjina painting at Kalumburu.
The National Gallery of Victoria describes the family as the longest continuing family of painters in the community and as important leaders within the Wanjina painting tradition.
This continuity matters.
Wanjina painting is not preserved only in museum collections or rock shelters.
It remains part of an active cultural tradition.
Senior artists teach.
Younger artists learn.
Images continue to be made.
The visual language changes while cultural relationships remain.
Lily Karadada’s work occupies an important position within that process.
Wanjina on canvas
The move onto canvas allowed Karadada to preserve the formal strength of Wanjina imagery while working at scales and in formats suited to contemporary exhibition.
The National Gallery of Victoria’s 1990 Wanjina measures more than a metre high and places the ancestral figure within a vertical composition made from earth pigments and natural binder.
The change in support alters the encounter.
The work can hang on a gallery wall.
It can travel.
It can enter institutional collections.
Yet the figure retains the visual authority associated with older representations.
This tension between ancient tradition and contemporary format is central to Karadada’s practice.
A tradition that continues to evolve
Wanjina imagery is sometimes treated outside its cultural context as though it belongs entirely to the distant past.
Karadada’s work demonstrates why that view is incomplete.
The tradition continues because artists continue to work with it.
New surfaces can be introduced.
Materials can change.
Different compositions can emerge.
Individual artists can develop recognisable styles.
None of this necessarily breaks continuity.
Instead, adaptation can be part of what allows a tradition to endure.
Recognition of Lily Karadada
Karadada’s work has been exhibited extensively since the late 20th century.
Art Leven records exhibitions including Aboriginal Women’s Exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1991, Images of Power: Aboriginal Art of the Kimberley at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1993, and Power of the Land: Masterpieces of Aboriginal Art at the NGV in 1994.
Her work is held in major institutional collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery, Art Gallery of South Australia, Berndt Museum of Anthropology, and international collections.
The NGV alone holds 19 works attributed to Karadada across several media and periods.
Looking at a Lily Karadada painting
A Lily Karadada painting often begins with the face.
Large eyes meet the viewer.
A halo frames the head.
The mouth is absent.
Then the surrounding surface becomes more apparent.
Dots descend like rain.
Animals appear.
Lines radiate.
Earth pigments shift subtly across the figure.
The apparent simplicity of the composition begins to open into a wider network of relationships.
Weather.
Country.
Ancestry.
Renewal.
The Wanjina remains the visual centre, but the painting extends far beyond the figure itself.
The significance of Lily Karadada
Lily Karadada’s importance lies in the strength with which she carried a deeply established cultural tradition into contemporary art.
Her paintings remain grounded in Woonambal Country and Wanjina knowledge while demonstrating a clear individual visual language.
She worked with ancient imagery without treating it as static.
She used earth pigment, bark, canvas, slate, and other materials.
She brought Wanjina painting into galleries and collections while maintaining its connection to place and cultural authority.
Most importantly, her work belongs to an ongoing tradition rather than a completed historical chapter.
Rain continues.
Country changes.
Knowledge passes between generations.
And the Wanjina remain present.
Discover Lily Karadada at Art Leven
Art Leven (formerly Cooee Art) has handled works by Lily Karadada across different periods and media, including Wanjina paintings in natural earth pigment on bark and canvas.
Explore available and previously handled artworks, biographical information, exhibitions, collections, and further details on the Lily Karadada artist profile.