Pauletta Kerinaiua Australian, Tiwi, b. 1982

Dance: Tartuwali (Shark)

Pauletta was born in Darwin in 1982 and spent the first few years of her life at Paru, a very small remote village on Melville Island. Pauletta’s skin group is Rain and her dreaming dance the shark. She attended school at Ngui Public School then Nugui Catholic High School where she completed her HSC. After training in Business studies and working at the CDEP office in Nuguion Bathurst Island she decided to follow her dream of being an artist, which has been passed down to her from her mother and grandfather. In 1999 Pauletta moved to Milikapiti, in the north of Melville Island where she started working at Jilamara. Her artistic career was interrupted by the birth of her 3 children but as her children have become more independent, Pauletta has returned to her painting. Pauletta likes to paint kulama designs representing the initiation ceremony, the time of the year of the cheeky yam. Her kulama designs reflect a special spiritual quality.