Ray James’s painting, for example, shares ceremonial markings traced on the bodies of young men in the course of coming of age or initiation ceremonies.
Tjangala's work is often inspired by the Tingari Tjukurrpa cycle, a Dreaming sacred to Ray’s Pintupi kinsmen. The Dreaming narrates the journey of the Tingari elders, who travelled across the breadth and width of (what is known today as) the Western Desert, defeating evil spirits and establishing sacred sites. When encountering local communities, they performed initiation ceremonies which taught the communities about the laws and rituals of the land, about the topography and inhabitants of the surrounding regions, as well as teaching them such practical skills as gathering and locating sources of food and water.
The Tingari Tjukurrpa is considered to be among the vastest (known) Dreaming cycles, sacred to a number of indigenous communities. The initiated artists from different groups and regions depict either a particular aspect of the Tingari elders’ journey, or a particular ceremony associated with the Dreaming.
Ray James’s painting, for example, shares ceremonial markings traced on the bodies of young men in the course of coming of age or initiation ceremonies. The markings narrate the ceremonial rituals relating to the sojourn of the Tingari elders at the soakage water site of Yunala, west of Kiwirrkurra in Western Australia. The colours and shapes of the markings refer cumulatively to the rituals associated with the ceremonies, the topographical features of the area, as well as sources of water and edible plants, including the roots of the bush banana, which is found naturally in abundance in the region.
Though painted with acrylics, the choice of pigments references the local colours of the Yunala region as well as the origins of indigenous art in the sourcing of naturally found ochres for ceremonial decorations of bodies and sacred objects. Hence, the palette is dominated by yellow, brown, and black. The underpainting layers of black and two shades of brown are revealed beneath the outer ‘membrane’ of markings indelicate yellows, painted sequentially and progressively, with near-uniform dots, applied across and outwards from the central demarcation line of the overall compositional structure.
While some of Ray James’s paintings feature geometrical designs, others are remarkable for its organic and fluid formations. While still conveying a conceptualisation of the topographical space, the sensation of movement (or, in more contemporary terms, the perception of the optical illusion) created by the painting can be ascribed to the artist’s aim to capture, through the visual language of indigenous iconography, the spatial progress of the Tingari elders as well as the way in which the Tingari Tjukurrpa designs would move and undulate hypnotically when applied to the bodies of young men performing ritual movements on ceremonial occasions.