Kathleen Petyarre
| Kathleen Petyarre | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Kweyetwemp Petyarre c.1940 Atnangkere |
| Nationality | Australian Alyawarre / Anmatyerre |
| Notable work | Mountain Devil Lizard, Thorny Devil, Green Pea, Women Hunting Ankerr (Emu) |
| Movement | Contemporary Indigenous Australian art |
| Awards | National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (1996) |
Kathleen Petyarre (born Kweyetwemp Petyarre; c.1940) is an Australian Aboriginal artist. Her art refers directly to her country and her Dreamings. Petyarre's paintings have occasionally been compared to the works of American Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, and even to those of J.M.W. Turner. She has won several awards and is considered one of the 'most collectible artists in Australia'. Her works are in great demand at auctions. However, due to ongoing health problems, she has now all but retired from painting.
Kathleen Petyarre was born at Atnangkere, an important water soakage for Aboriginal people on the western boundary of Utopia Station, 150 miles (240 km) north-east of Alice Springs in Australia's Northern Territory. She belongs to the Alyawarre/Eastern Anmatyerre clan and speaks Eastern Anmatyerre, with English as her second language. Petyarre is the niece of the influential Aboriginal artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye and has several sisters who are also well-known artists in their own right, among them Gloria, Violet, Myrtle and Jeanna Petyarre. Kathleen, with her daughter Margaret and her sisters, settled at Iylenty (Mosquito Bore) at Utopia Station, near her birthplace.
Petyarre was introduced to the batik medium at a hippy commune on a visit to Wollongong, New South Wales, and began making her own in 1977 with the support and encouragement of the linguist and adult education instructor Jenny Green. 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 painting with acrylic on canvas.
Petyarre's technique consists 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. The dots are used to represent, among other things, flowers and spinifex, or animated clouds of sand, hail or even bush seeds. Meanwhile, various shapes and colours are used to depict geographical features such as sand-hills, watercourses and rockholes. Her imagery has been described as “simultaneously macro- and microcosmic”.
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