Maljah Cathy Snow is passionate about sharing culture and stories with wider audiences and says that every day she is excited by the challenges of creating a new artwork which can inspire other Indigenous artists to follow their dreams and keep their culture strong.

The exhibition, Maljah Cathy Snow: Barlawink, My Mother’s Country forms part of the Cairns Art Gallery online First Nations Research Archive developed as part of the Gallery’s online Legacy Archive produced to celebrate the Gallery’s 30th anniversary.

Maljah Cathy Snow was born into the Gkuathaarn clan in Normanton, in the Gulf of Carpentaria. She spent her childhood on Magowra Station, on her mother’s country. Her bush name, Maljah, means lightning and comes from her grandmother’s dreaming. Later in life she leaned that her grandfather’s name meant floodwaters. This knowledge inspired her to create artworks about water and water themes, including salt and freshwater mussels, water birds and plants, and the complex patterning of tidal water marks.

Maljah says, ‘My art allows me to express my culture, my love of and connection with the land. The use of my trademark colours, red and black, expresses my appreciation for the land, the sea, and my youth.’

The Cairns Art Gallery exhibition was an important opportunity for Snow to create a new body of work and to develop new ways of presenting her work to a public audience.