Many of Emily Kam (or Kame) Kngwarreye’s paintings are ‘direct painterly interpretations of the landscape in all its [seasonal] guises and hues. The changing colours of the wildflowers that carpet the ground as a result of heavy rainstorms are reflected in the exuberant flow of overlapping dotting and merging colours that characterise one of her reverred styles’ (Art Gallery of Western Australia, 1993 Tjukurrpa, 48).

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While bearing many of the hallmark symbols of the now well-known Central Desert Aboriginal art movement, Emily Kame Kngwarreye's paintings have always carried highly distinctive style. This painting is from the period when her canvases first revealed a significant divergence from the central tenets of 'dot and circle' composition. As its title suggests, the artist is responding to the purely surface feature of her desert landscape, a landscape that springs into a thousand-colour carpet of flowers and plants whenever the unpredictable rain falls.

Kngwarreye's overlapping splodges of painted dots raise immediate comparisons with techniques employed by the Impressionist movement, with her primary emphasis on the exploration of colour and texture and a clear pleasure in placing paint on canvas. For all these enigmatic comparisons, the originality of Emily Kame Kngwarreye's works commands and immediate response from viewers.

SHORTER VERSION FOR SAC 2011
Emily Kame Kngwarreye's paintings possess a unique and distinctive style. Unlike many of Kngwarreye’s later paintings, this painting depicts her Country’s surface, a landscape that springs into a thousand-colour carpet of flowers and plants whenever the unpredictable rain falls. Kngwarreye's sporatic application of painted dots raise immediate comparisons with techniques employed by the Impressionist painters, with her primary emphasis on the exploration of colour and texture and a clear pleasure in placing paint on canvas. For all these enigmatic comparisons, the originality of Emily Kame Kngwarreye's works commands and immediate response from viewers.