Sarrita King | 'Earth Elements, 2026' | 80x82cm

Code: DDSK26065

Artist: Sarrita King

Title: Earth Elements

Area: Darwin, NT

Community: Gurindji / Waanyi

Medium: Acrylic On Canvas

Size: 80x82cm

Year: 2026

Sarrita King paints the earth as if listening to it. Earth Elements looks down on Country from above, tracing the way water, wind and stone leave their marks over time. Blue veins wander across a pale ground. Dark grains gather in drifts. Pockets of ochre and teal seep through like mineral stains in wet rock.

King grew up in Darwin, surrounded by the weather and landforms of the tropical north. Her father, the late William King Jungala, taught her that every crack, ripple and burn mark is the earth speaking. She calls this the Language of the Earth. Her Earth Elements works are her translations of it.

The dotting here is dense and almost atmospheric. Fine points build into cloud like fields, then loosen into open washes where the canvas breathes. Ringed forms suggest waterholes seen from the air. Meandering lines read as dry creek beds, or the tracks of rain finding its way through sand. Nothing is fixed. The eye keeps drifting, the way it does over real country from a small plane.

King belongs to the Gurindji and Waanyi peoples, with ancestral lands running from Katherine down through the desert toward Mount Isa. She began painting at sixteen and has built a practice that carries her father's methods forward while making them her own. The result is quiet and physical at once. You feel the heat in the ground and the coolness of the water beneath it.

A contemplative work for a room that rewards slow looking.