Local Indigenous Artist Collaborates with the Children at Green Leaves Seaford Meadows to Create an Outdoor Masterpiece

In a quiet corner of Green Leaves Seaford Meadows’ outdoor playscape, known to the children as their ‘Zen Garden’, stands a rock which has recently been transformed into an inspiring piece of Indigenous art.

Surrounded by a circle of tree stumps reminiscent of a gathering place, this colourful masterpiece is a labour of love created by one of our parents, Elisabeth, an Aboriginal artist, originally from Wiradjuri country in Orange, New South Wales.

The centre recently unveiled this wonderful creation at the Centre’s eighth birthday celebration. Centre Director, Lynn, first met Elisabeth when she became a part of the Green Leaves community alongside her two wonderful boys. Elisabeth has been collaborating with the Centre on their Indigenous Art Project. She took the children with her on a creative journey to expand their knowledge of Aboriginal culture.

During the project, they learned about the meaning behind a range of symbols and were encouraged to use their imagination to determine what other symbols could mean.

Elisabeth believes that children are able to relate to art, specifically storytelling through visual symbols which is how Aboriginal culture passes on knowledge and information. It’s a wonderful way to start conversations and evoke their own storytelling abilities.

At Green Leaves, we value the genuine connections and partnerships we develop with our families. We’ve been extremely lucky to cross paths with Elisabeth and we’re grateful for her generosity in sharing her time, talent, and knowledge. She has also taken the time to share a little bit about herself, her art and the inspiration behind it. We hope you’ll enjoy getting to know Elisabeth as much as we did.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Hi, my name is Elisabeth and I’m an Artist and mother to two boys who attend Green Leaves at Seaford Meadows. On Indigenous Literacy Day, I visited my son’s Kindy room before to share a little about Indigenous Culture and to do a hands-on workshop with the children about the importance of Storytelling through Art in my culture.

Tell us about the beautiful Indigenous rock painting you have been working on at Green Leaves Seaford Meadows.

This rock is located in the ‘Zen Garden’ portion of the centre. It is an area where the children gather to sit, share, have quiet time and come together to do activities. As such, I wanted to paint a scene depicting ‘meeting places’, along with some animal tracks, humans, symbols depicting various parts of nature such as rainbows, stars, waterholes and also some other symbols such as circles and lines that I’ve left up for interpretation of the students so that they can begin to tell their own ‘dreaming’ stories when looking at the rock.

The front of the rock depicts three meeting places that are connected. There are large arches around these depicting humans sitting around the meeting place. Traditionally these could mean campfires, meeting places or waterholes depending on how it was depicted. I’ve painted smaller arches on the inside to indicate small children present in these meeting circles.

To the left, there’re large kangaroo tracks that start from the bottom and work their way up to the top of the rock. At the top, there’s a rainbow and some stars dotted around.

Around the other side of the rock, you’ll spot Emu tracks, and some more animal tracks. As for what animals these represent, I will leave this up for the children to use their imaginations as to what animals one might find on country.

On the left side, there’re two waterholes connected by running water. This was a nod to my country as Wiradjuri land is bordered by 3 rivers and water is very important to the people living there and to the animals that gather there.

I chose to get involved with this project because I wanted to give back to my community in some way and to share knowledge about Aboriginal culture. All children can relate to Art and specifically storytelling.

I, myself can still remember so clearly my nan and pop teaching me what different symbols meant and also why they painted them where they did on the didgeridoos and in art. Everything had a meaning and a reason for being where it was.

I wanted to help expose the children to some Indigenous culture and to help start a conversation that otherwise might not happen. Because of their age, these conversations will stem around the art and symbols, yet I also wanted to evoke their own storytelling abilities and have them be able to look at it and interpret it in perhaps a different way to their peers.

For example, use the meaning of the symbols to tell different stories, perhaps about why the animals are going this way or that, why the people are meeting? What are they talking about? Do the curvy lines represent snakes or perhaps dreaming spirits? Are the animals going near the water because they are thirsty? It’s really a collaboration between artist and student.

Lastly, I chose bright colours to engage the students and to bring a contemporary twist. I myself use bright colours in my Artworks and I wanted to bring this into the Rock.

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An artist’s creative process is often intriguing! Where do they draw inspiration from? What are their artistic beliefs? If you’d like to get to know Elisabeth a little more, click here to read our special feature on our favourite local artist.