Similarly, Sacred Life is a representation of Northwood’s experience of living between Alice Springs and the Indigenous community of Hermannsburg (Ntaria), which has shaped and changed her practice. Living remotely offered the artist an entry point into a detached state, so she could enter into another, in order to shift and deepen her artistic practice and colour palette. Expanding on her signature organic like ceramic vessels, Northwood presents her first series of paintings in this new body of work, leaning into another element of visceral play and artistic expression. Between painting and ceramics, Sacred Life has seen Northwood develop a stronger affinity with hands-on methods of painting and making—without brushes or tools, instead using locally dug clay from Alice Springs, charcoal from the fire, drawing with found pigment, and applying medium with her hands in an ‘expressive dance’. Instead of using local ochre, Northwood created her own, due to feeling uncomfortable with ‘taking’ from the ochre pits on Aboriginal land.
Being displaced from convenience saw Northwood thrive in an environment that breathes its own way of life, enriched with a wealth of natural resources, void of the latest technology and easy access to man-made art materials. Ultimately, a different way of living and being evoked resourcefulness, enabling Northwood to delve into her way of intuitive art making and truly honour the cohesiveness that exists between the body, mind, and land.
This connection that permeates Northwood’s work is known as animism—the attribution of a living soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena, the belief that life runs through all things—and the removal of hierarchy for a more Daoist approach to interconnectivity and oneness with the world. Through her work, the artist honours and reflects on a deep connection with, and respect for, the land and a desperate need to conserve, respect, and protect it. Northwood says, “My process is about getting out of the head and into the body. It’s a body-based experience free of the mind’s chatter and tendency to get in the way. It’s freedom from thought. The point of my work is to be in the flow on each mark, a graceful and playful dance. The rhythmic energy that flows on the paper is an expression of a larger vibrating power. I attempt to connect to this and honour this; my unity and oneness with something much larger”.