Elizabeth Durack

Elizabeth Durack Clancy CMG, OBE (6 July 1915 – 25 May 2000) was a Western Australian artist and writer.

Born in the Perth suburb of Claremont on 6 July 1915, she was a daughter of Kimberley pioneer, Michael Patrick Durack (1865–1950) and his wife, Bessie Johnstone Durack. She was the younger sister of writer and historian Dame Mary Durack (1913–1994). The sisters were educated at the Loreto Convent in Perth, and also on the Kimberley cattle stations, Argyle Downs and Ivanhoe. It was there that they established unique and enduring relationships with the Mirriuwong-Gajerrong people of the Ord River region. In 1936–37 the sisters travelled to Europe where Elizabeth studied at the Chelsea Polytechnic, London.

Her work was notable for the way it combined and reflected both western and aboriginal perceptions of the world. Based for much of her life in remote parts of north and central Western Australia, far from the metropolitan centres of mainstream artistic activity, Durack received stimulus and inspiration from sources quite different from those of her contemporaries, e.g. William Dobell, Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker, et al. Separated by both geography and gender, her talent emerged "... original, versatile and persistent, a xerophytic adaptation, almost, to a particularly harsh environment".

From August 1946 when she held her first exhibition in Perth, to July 2000 when an exhibition planned by the artist was held posthumously in London, Elizabeth Durack held 65 solo exhibitions and participated in many group shows. Over that time her art evolved from simple line drawings, through part-abstract metaphorical works, to the transcendent works of her last creative phase.

Durack's work included a number of dyeline prints, hand coloured in watercolour, depicting life on a Kimberley cattle station (Ivanhoe and Lissadell pastoral stations). Aboriginal women and children feature in these pictures, four of which can be seen at the National Museum of Australia.

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