Jilamara (Design) displays Cornelia Tipuamantumirri’s carefully dotted paint application, here applied to a zigzag pattern of ochre tonings. Tipuamantumirri paints designs from her Tiwi culture using patterning from older ceremonial art and bark paintings, or carved Pukumani poles. Jilamara is the brightly coloured ochre patterns painted on the body for the Pukumani ceremony, in which participants’ bodies are covered in designs and sacred markings related to kin to disguise them from the spirits of the dead. These highly individuated forms drawn from a shared understanding of geometric motifs are also translated onto monumental carved tutini (burial poles) that are placed around gravesites. Tipuamantumirri was born on Melville Island, at the juncture of the Arafura and Timor Seas. Melville and Bathurst islands comprise the Tiwi Islands, which are home to the Tiwi people. The language and traditions of the Tiwi are distinct, setting them apart from Aboriginal cultures on mainland Australia. Within this context, Tiwi art has developed over time and across various genres, incorporating and expanding upon traditional motifs drawn from Tiwi people’s understanding of cultural cosmologies. A gifted traditional weaver, Tipuamantumirri also has full knowledge of Tiwi ceremony, body painting and feather and fibre regalia, as well as song and dance. She was encouraged by the then managers of Munupi Arts & Crafts Association on Melville Island to attend the art centre late in life. They hoped to revitalise the art practice of younger artists and give them guidance from their respected cultural leaders through natural association and observance. Tipuamantumirri’s stately presence was immediately redolent of past elders, the artist silently standing to work, smoking a crab claw and painting slowly and confidently with a pwoja, a traditional painting comb. This implement, a flat carved stick with multiple prongs, is used to simultaneously paint rows of dots in ochre or paint. Like some of the great Tiwi artists of previous decades, the surety of Tipuamantumirri’s practice has grown, revealing skill and aesthetic confidence to represent particular Tiwi designs like those signifying the crocodile, or the white dotting on a dark background signalling the phosphorescent trail of Jarrikalani, the turtle moving through the dark sea.