Thelma Dixon - Bush tomatoes with flowers

Catalogue Number: 26/104

This is a painting about the bush tomato plant and the flowers that bloom before the fruit is ripe. The bush tomato is found in the hot dry bushland of Central Australia. After a big rain the plants grow tiny flowers and soon after, produce small green fruits. The green fruit is not ripe, when the fruit turns yellow it is ripe and ready to eat. The fruit can also become dried in the sun and turn brown, this is also still good to eat. The curves in the painting represent women sitting on the ground, they have their digging sticks beside them and a coolamon, an oval wooden bowl used in the old days to collect food into.

Aboriginal Women know how to find bush food in the desert and they pass on this knowledge to the younger women.