Zaachariaha Fielding's CV within Australia's creative scene has grown after taking out Australia's oldest, and among its most prestigious art prizes.
On Friday Fielding (one half of electro-dance duo Electric Fields) was handed the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW's Archibald Prize announcements for his painting Inma depicting the sounds of Mimili, a small community and his home in the east of Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands.
The Wynne is awarded to the best landscape painting of Australian scenery or figure sculpture.
A first-time finalist, Fielding's expression of the sounds of his homeland is a fitting one.
The intertwining of culture in his art is nothing new.
Pitjantjatjara language has an integral role in Electric Fields' music over the duo's career, which boasts ARIA nominations and wins at the National Dreamtime Awards and National Indigenous Music Awards.
"'I feel like dancing right now. The work is music, and I am music. My work is a celebration and is a song in itself and the sound comes from my community," Fielding said upon receiving the prize from Art Gallery of NSW director Michael Brand.
"I am going to write an amazing song about this experience. My heart is so full. I can't wait to tell my family.
"This is a memory that I was able to document which happened in Paralpi. It's a place that's like the Sydney Opera House for the APY Lands."
The work, measuring three metres across, gives the inma (song and dance) and movement around his home a new life through onto linen.
"It's where people come to embrace and celebrate children, teaching them how to move and mimic their clan emblem, and, for Mimili, this has always been the maku (witchetty grub)," Fielding said.
"The atmosphere of this work is full of sound, movement and teaching. All of the communities are coming together, sharing their storylines. However, this platform is only for children. This is for the babies and it's about them being taught by the masters, their Elders."
Fielding also featured in the bracket of finalists for the Archibald, Australia's most acclaimed art prize recognising outstanding portraits, not as an artist, but instead the titular subject of Michael Simm's work up for the prize.
Comedian and artist Ahn Do's portrait of the late-great Archie Roach was also a finalist.
Julia Gutman received the Archibald for her painting of fellow Australian musician Montaigne.
