Born near Lake MacKay, in the Gibson Desert of central Australia, Linda Syddick was brought up in Kintore, in the heart of the Papunya Aboriginal community, of which she has become a leading artist.

Deeply rooted in the tradition of the ‘Dreamtime’ - the mythical time of the creation of the world for the Aborigines - she celebrates it using traditional pictorial techniques: in particular, by using stippling, characteristic of the paintings on the ground that the Aborigines create for ceremonies in honour of one or other of their Great Ancestors. Among her people, Linda counts the Singari Men who, during the Dreamtime, travelled the length and breadth of the Australian continent with their wives and young initiates, shaping it, founding various sacred sites and bequeathing laws and customs to mankind. These Mingari Men are evoked here in the form of the Emeu - the totemic deity of the artist's father, to whom the painting is dedicated. The emu ancestor is represented four times by pairs of three-fingered legs in the corners of the canvas, perhaps indicating the four points of the compass. The emus themselves are gathered around a watering hole seen from above (the central circle) called Walakurritje: this place refers to a particular episode in the legend of the Mingari Men: they were the ones who created the rain; once created, it began to trickle down the rocks; in the end, it accumulated in various holes where we can still find some of the waterholes.