Grass Seed Dreaming

In many of Barbara Weir’s paintings, long, tapering lines overlap gracefully to represent a grass once abundant at Utopia before cattle grazing was introduced in the early 20th century. Its botanical name is Portulaca oleracea. For thousands of years, this grass has been important to Aboriginal people because its small black seeds can be ground into flour. Rather than painting the seeds, Weir depicts the grass itself. Her colours show its natural condition: green suggests young, growing grass; yellow, red and black indicate grass burning in a bushfire; and white or grey suggests the aftermath of fire. Occasional red within an otherwise white or off-white grass painting indicates that some fire is still burning.