Yanyuwa artist George Cooley has painted the desert landscape around Coober Pedy in his finalist work for the Telstra General Painting Award at the 2026 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA).

Now in its 43rd year, Telstra NATSIAA brings together First Nations artists from across the country, with 64 works selected from 221 entries for this year's exhibition at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.

Mr Cooley is a community leader from Coober Pedy, where he has lived since childhood.

His finalist work, 'It's not a hard place', is made with synthetic polymer paint on board and reflects the desert Country north of Coober Pedy.

The work portrays a place of dry land, made of sandstone valleys and tablelands, while challenging the idea that the region is only a hard landscape.

"This is my fourth Telstra NATSIAA finalist in a row now," Mr Cooley said. "My first one was in 2023, so here we are in 2026.

"Every time it comes, I get excited."

He said the country around Coober Pedy had shaped how he saw and painted the landscape.

"Coober Pedy is an arid desert type of country, very little trees, but it's an open-minded country," Mr Cooley said.

"It's an old seabed that's been eroded over the years and tableland country.

Mr Cooley said the land did not look like a mountain range, but erosion had revealed layers of sediment and colour that often appeared in his paintings.

The ochre colours, rock forms and desert layers have become central to his work.

He said the landscape was not copied from a single place while standing in front of it, but came from memory and lived experience.

"I kept the landscape and the countryside as I've seen it all my life," Mr Cooley said.

"I do it by vision, I don't stand at a hillside or an object and look at it and start painting."

Mr Cooley took up painting in 2021 and said he was largely self-taught.

He began with brush on canvas before moving to palette knife on hardboard, a change he said helped him achieve the texture and colour blending now seen in his paintings.

Mr Cooley has also worked as an opal miner since he was about 16.

He said mining had helped him understand the many colours held in the ground around Coober Pedy.

"I've seen opal all my life and you still see different colours that you've never seen before," Mr Cooley said.

"It's what I try to capture when I do my painting, the ground level and the sediment level.

"As you go down, you see all the different layers and layers of sediments, a variety of colours and ochres."

Mr Cooley said NATSIAA had opened his eyes to the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art across the country.

He hopes his work could also open people's eyes to the desert Country he paints.

"A lot of them have never left a city to see a country like this," Mr Cooley said.

"Every time I show them at the exhibition, they can't believe that this country is out there.

"It's a blessed country. It's a cultural country."

The 2026 Telstra NATSIAA exhibition opened at MAGNT on June 27.

The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on August 7, with artists sharing in a total prize pool of $190,000, including the $100,000 Telstra Art Award.