Pauletta Kerinaiua

Skin: Anjiluwi (Rain)
Country: Mantiyupwi
Dance: Tartuwali (Shark)
Dot Texture Short 2
Born in 1982 at Darwin, Pauletta spent the first few years of her life at Paru, a small camp on Melville Island. She attended school at Nguiu Public Primary School followed by Nguiu Catholic High School, where she completed her HSC.

After training in Business Studies and working at the CDEP (Community Development Education Program) office in Nguiu on Bathurst Island she decided to follow her dream of being an artist, much like her mother and grandfather.

In 1999 Pauletta moved to Milikapiti, on Melville Island where she started working at Jilamara art centre. Pauletta Kerinauia has been working at the indigenous owned and governed not for profit Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association since 2003. Thought out her career at the art centre, she has had many successes while also raised a family of three children and now one granddaughter. In the last 20 years at the art centre, Pauletta has been part of group exhibitions, national art awards and project-based collaborative works.

Pauletta likes to paint kulama designs which represent the Tiwi initiation ceremony, which is marked at a time of the year by a round yam and the appearance of a ring around japarra – the moon. She utilises the pwoja (a carved ironwood body painting comb) to apply dots. Pauletta has also become well known for painting the WW2 Bombing of Darwin story – a major historic event in the lives of the Tiwi that is also an iconic dance performed by groups of Tiwi people for yoyi.