Ruby’s art thrives in her baby son’s shine

A troubled young artist finds her ‘peaceful place’.

Up-and-coming artist Ruby on the waterfront in Cairns. Picture: Brian Cassey

The length of her baby’s black eyelashes, the exact shade of his rosy bottom lip and how his dark hair curls at the nape of his neck are among the details Ruby fought to remember during four months in a Queensland jail.

“When I was in prison, I didn’t want to forget him or his little face,” she said.

“I started imagining his little face and started drawing him.”

Throughout traumatic times in her relatively short life, and there have been too many, drawing has been her “peaceful place”.

“Sometimes it’s like medicine,” she said.

“It can make you feel good and forget about the bad things and everything.”

The 21-year-old, who was released on parole in March, told The Australian she has been diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of her father’s physical and sexual violence against her.

A work by Ruby.

The young Warlpiri woman – who fled the Northern Territory for far north Queensland following her father’s trial – said medication hadn’t helped her, but making art did.

For her, it’s a way to feel safe and grounded in the present moment, to process her trauma without words, and to hopefully forget the horrific abuse she has suffered.

In between weekly visits with her 18-month-old son, Ruby draws in her only artbook.

Each picture takes a few hours and all of her focus.

“It’s the only thing that makes me feel calm,” she said.

“When I draw, I just focus on what I’m doing right now and everything just disappears.”

She mostly uses pencils – paint and canvas are luxuries – and draws on her own skin if she runs out of paper.

A work by Ruby.

A work by Ruby.

Back in Yuendumu, before her father starting raping her, Ruby spent hours illustrating relatives including her cousin-­sister, Rickisha Robertson, who she grew up with at house 577 in the remote outback community.

Rickisha’s boyfriend, Kumanjayi Walker, had also lived with them – on and off – for the final five or so years of his life before police fatally shot him during an arrest in November 2019.

Before her father’s four-month reign of terror from late 2017, Ruby drew camp dogs for a local art corporation.

The realistic drawings, for which she was given just $20, have since sold for hundreds.

Now, banished from her traditional land and separated from her loved ones as punishment for speaking out about her father’s offending, Ruby tries to capture on paper the central desert landscape where she grew up.

A work by Ruby.

A work by Ruby.

On Saturday, as The Weekend Australian revealed her shocking story of abuse, Ruby sat by the Cairns Esplanade and pencilled the waterholes around Yuendumu and Nyirripi that she had visited throughout her childhood.

Around the waterholes she depicted – from the sky – tiny emu and kangaroo tracks. Among them are people. Nearby, a man standing on a riverbank brandishes a spear.

“I like how the old days used to be, like how people used to go hunting with their bare foot and everything,” she said. “Sometimes I like to draw them.”

Now, more than 2000km away from home and essentially homeless, the brave young woman dreams of being a professional artist one day, but right now just wants a job and somewhere safe to live with her son.