Sarrita King | 'Lightning, 2026' | 30x30cm

Code: DDSK26101

Artist: Sarrita King

Title: Lightning

Area: Darwin, NT

Community: Gurindji / Waanyi

Medium: Acrylic On Linen

Size: 30x30cm

Year: 2026

Lightning cracks the dark sky above Darwin's tropical north. Sarrita King grew up under these storms. The memory of them drives this series, and here the energy splits the canvas into charged fragments of gold against deep black.

Two bright cores anchor the composition. They flare outward in fine radiating strokes, the way a strike burns itself onto the retina for a second after it lands. Pale veins run between them, mapping the forked path of the current across the sky. The surrounding fields pulse with short, directional marks. You can almost hear the rain driving sideways.

Sarrita began painting at sixteen and learned her craft between two influences. There are the traditional dotting techniques of the Western Desert, and the unorthodox methods passed down from her late father, William King Jungala. The combination gives her storm paintings their peculiar depth. The surface feels textured like weathered ground, yet the subject is pure sky.

She often speaks of the earth having its own visual language. Lightning, in her reading, writes on the sky the same way cracked earth writes on the ground. The two mirror each other. Look at the splintered pattern here and you can read it either way, as a storm seen from below or as parched country seen from above.

King is the daughter of William King Jungala, and comes from a Gurindji family proud to be part of the Wave Hill Walk-Off. That inheritance of story and country sits quietly behind every work. Lightning carries the weather of the Top End and the memory of watching it as a child, held in a small, concentrated square.