WALANGARI Jakamarra - also known by his missionary name, Colin - runs a finger over the brilliant dots and whorls decorating the canvas on the floor beside him. As he does, explaining the colour code that reveals the hidden picture, a magnificent three-dimensional Australian bush landscape appears where minutes earlier there had been painted dots.
Purple mountains with lilac peaks, the red earth, the green of rejuvenation, the white gum trees, circles within circles - the ripples that form when a stone is dropped into a pond - that represent water holes and campsites.
It's so easy when you understand. But so few people do, Australians included. Thirty-three-year-old Walangari Jakamarra, one of the new generation of Aboriginal artists, wants to put that right.
That's why he's in Hong Kong: ''When people understand the paintings they can see it. A lot of people look at the aesthetic quality, rather than look at it as a medium for learning.'' Mr Jakamarra, grandson of the late Albert Namatjira, Australia's most famous Aboriginal artist, is one of nine leading Aboriginal artists from the Western desert of central Australia represented in an exhibition that opened here on Friday - Hong Kong's first Aboriginal art show.
He is the first Aboriginal artist to come here and, as he has walked through Central carrying his digeridoo, a highly decorated, tubular, wooden musical instrument, people have been unable to contain their curiosity: ''They think, 'what's he got there, a dangerous weapon?' But then I've stood in alleyways and started playing and they think, 'wow','' Mr Jakamarra says.
Aboriginal art has become not only fashionable, but highly sought after, much copied, and expensive investment tool.