Here is a poor re-production, but I wanted to show this painting I re-worked of a sunset in Suki River, Western Province, Papua New Guinea. The original and proper re-production are superior. I worked in Suki for a short time and have fond memories. The place is surrounded by water. You can look as far as you can and the water never stops. The river joins to others and small lakes that are a home to wildlife and fish. The scenes are quite breath-taking. In a typical evening, here right off the edge of the airstrip (which I did not show but it is at the back of this family), canoes would come across from the villages to pick up the passengers. Then, someone would hold the lamp or a torch as the rest paddled all the way home. Sometimes the trip took three to four hours.
If the villagers were lucky, a motored dinghy would be there to fetch them. And it was not always the fastest, some dinghies would run out of fuel on the way home, so the travellers still needed to paddle. After one of my community craft development workshops, there was no dinghy so eight women paddled me to the airstrip, it took us two and a half hours and they all stood in the single out-rigger and pushed with long sticks and paddles. They told me to sit. I was not brave enough to stand and paddle. We got there on time.
