Creative Spirits

The art of painting on bark was once widely found in many parts of the Pacific, including the Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea, the home of the Kwoma people who are the subject of this study. The styles of the paintings and the subjects of designs were as varied as the hundreds of languages spoken in this region. 

Following European contact at the end of the nineteenth century, and the social change this brought, many New Guinea peoples discontinued producing their vibrant designs on bark. But in some areas the art form still flourishes. This book gives a detailed account of the art of painting on bark among the Kwoma, a people speaking a distinct language who display their barks on the ceilings of their ceremonial men’s houses. The book includes accounts of the work of a number of individual artists all of whom are represented by paintings in one or more major art museums internationally. 

This second edition has a new chapter illustrating thirty-three large-format Kwoma paintings on paper commissioned by the author in the course of his fieldwork in the Sepik. All thirty-three works on paper, along with forty-two of the barks illustrated, now form part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (Australia). The book is a unique study of bark painting in a Papua New Guinea society and will have wide appeal to those interested in the art and ethnography of this region.