11 Facts About Kathleen Petyarre

Kathleen Petyarre's art refers directly to her country and her Dreamings.

Kathleen Petyarre has won several awards and is considered one of the "most collectable artists in Australia".

Kathleen Petyarre was introduced to the batik medium at a hippy commune on a visit to Wollongong, New South Wales, and began making her own batik in 1977 with the support and encouragement of the linguist and adult education instructor Jenny Green.

Kathleen Petyarre continued to produce batiks with other women at Utopia until the late 1980s, when, prompted by allergies to the chemicals they were using, she began developing her signature style of painting with acrylic on canvas.

Kathleen Petyarre's technique consisted of layering very fine dots of thin acrylic paint onto the canvas, evoking the Aboriginal custom of ceremonial body painting, to carefully construct abstract landscapes that reveal a remarkable depth when viewed up close.

Kathleen Petyarre's imagery has been described as "simultaneously macro- and microcosmic".

Kathleen Petyarre adopted an aerial view typical of her region's artworks to reconstruct memorised landscapes and express her Dreamings as "a barely tangible, shadowy palimpsest, overwritten, as it were, by the surface colours and movement".

Kathleen Petyarre's rise to international recognition began at the Aboriginal Art from Utopia exhibition at the Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, on 31 October 1989.

Kathleen Petyarre's work was selected, along with just a handful of Aboriginal artists, for inclusion in the permanent collection of the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris.

Controversy arose in 1997 when Kathleen Petyarre's estranged partner of ten years, Ray Beamish, claimed that he had been a major contributor to the winning painting, Storm in Atnangkere Country II, which currently hangs at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin.

Kathleen Petyarre's name was eventually cleared and she retained her award.