Aboriginal Bark Paintings The Dreamings

The Aboriginal people are the original people who lived in Australia, like the Native American here. These people live in an area called the Outback, that is like our country-side. It is the desert area. Lets take a trip to the Australian Outback

The Aboriginal people have a belief system a lot like the Kuba African people They also believe in lots of sprit begins, only these sprit beings helped to create the earth. When Aboriginals tell stories about these sprit beings they call the stories “Dreaming Stories”

Many of these “Dreaming Stories” are illustrated in Bark Paintings This mean that they actually paint on tree bark instead of paper or canvas. When they paint the sprit-beings they paint the animals as if viewing it from above.

Then they embellish the animal with abstract geometric designs The also embellish around the animal with line and dots and symbols for the enviroment

Symbols you can use on your painting

Student Work

PowerPoint by: Beth Rowe