Lawrence Pennington was always creative. He was born into a society that revered ceremony and symbolism in both the performed and depicted. He moved through his early years, safe in the existing cultural boundaries of an arid environment wrapped in spiritual meaning and song. When Lawrence was born circa 1934 at the site of Urlu, in the north of Spinifex Country, he was born into a known spiritual placement: an accepted relationship within the lived terrestrial sphere. This was governed by powerful beings who had not only shaped the landscape from the beginning of time, but also placed within it a sacred oral continuity that could be spoken, sung, or danced in different guises— or painted. His world view, like his landscape and familial connections, was vast but defined by a dictated cultural journey of always gaining knowledge. In short, he belonged. Being part of something bigger than oneself is not just what everyone needs but what they intrinsically desire. 

Imagine then that your whole determined existence is not only linked to your immediate relatives past and present, but your proximity to place when born. And that site then determines how you can express yourself spiritually with others— your position and responsibility in an omnipresent society. Imagine also that it could be taken away by others and you yourself could be set adrift— floating in unfamiliar territory, looking for a way to return. Imagine too, if it would take 30 plus years before you could again breathe in your true place in the world.  

Lawrence would have been a young Wati- (initiated man) when the Spinifex People had their way of existence taken from them in the late 1950s. The Australian Government had acquiesced most of the Great Victoria Desert for the British Atomic Testing, conducted first at Emu Fields and then Maralinga. Native Patrol Officers were employed to scout and ‘clear the area of any natives,’ though the land had already been deemed uninhabited. The Spinifex People, including Lawrence, were eventually relocated some 800km southwest to Cundeelee Mission, where they would learn the ways and language of the very people who were poisoning their country.   

It was not until the late 1980s that Lawrence placed his feet back on the country he was born into, that he belonged to. The people who confiscated and desecrated his country had long gone, but their impact continued— and still does. Their exodus, though, was the catalyst for the Spinifex people to finally receive ownership of country recognised and returned to them in the form of Native Title Determination in the year 2000— this in itself an incongruous exercise of stating the obvious. Two paintings— a ‘Men’s Combined’ and a ‘Women’s Combined’— were submitted as evidence for continuity of relationship with country that had never been ceded. Of course, it was accepted. But those two paintings were the catalyst that enabled acrylic painting to become correlated with not just the land but the spiritual relationship to that land. Their Land.  

In 1998, Lawrence painted on that first ‘Men’s painting,’ and it seems, he never looked back. Having taken to acrylic painting as a means to express his beloved country— a way to bring his significant sites into the present day. Like written words describing events that formulated a spiritual belonging, Lawrence would place the deeper meaning of his country in the pictorial— not as literal pictures but as explanations of evidence— a visual commentary on the power of place and his authority within it.  

He depicted the significant sites of Mituna and Pukara, both within the Wati Kutjara Tjukurpa (Two Men Creation Line), an epic narrative that spans Spinifex Country and a constant in Lawrence’s life. But he also leaned into the site of Nyuman, which holds the powerful Waluwara Tjukurpa (Wedge-tailed eagle Creation Line), often refusing to elaborate details other than the punu wara (tall trees) where the eagle makes its nest. His paintings were always minimalist— keeping only the essential, leaving the fanfare to others, but he placed undeniable depth and power in each raw mark he danced upon the canvas, choreographed from birth; they expressed integrity and grace in the unknown. 

As he aged, his compositions became richer and stronger. His expansion of time and space upon the surface enhanced the potency of the composition. He was no longer intimidated by a larger surface area. In fact, he happily kept expressing his country as if, because of his incapacity to travel to these sites, there became much more a need to express them— as a means to somehow still reach them.  

Lawrence’s paintings are the realisation of something much bigger than depiction for an audience. We, the viewers, just happen to be part of that exchange— searching, ready to emotionally absorb what we can as the waves come— some washing and cleansing, others demanding we stand at attention.  

His paintings make time stand still for us— as if we are pulled into a vast creative vortex— a belonging to something far greater than ourselves. We should all smile now, for this is what we have always secretly desired.