JEANIE MILLS
Jeanie Mills (b. 1965)
Anaty (Desert Yam)
30 cm x 30 cm. Acrylic on linen Canvas
ARTIST
Jeannie paints the Anaty story from her father's country. This yam grows underground with its viny shrub growing above ground up to 1 metre high. The anaty is a tuber, or swollen root, of the shrub and tastes much like the common sweet potato. It can be eaten raw or cooked and is still a staple food for the desert aborigines where it can be harvested at any time of the year. Some can be found as big as a person's head.
Born in the NT in 1965, Jeannie’s paintings predominately represent the flower and seeds of the Anaty (desert yam or bush potato), which she enjoys collecting in her homeland. Jeannie's distinct style for her story was created in 2004 for Mbantua Gallery and its captivating energy has thrust her name throughout Galleries nationwide.
In 2008, Jeannie's large Anaty painting was accepted in the 2008 NATSIAA, the most prestigious Aboriginal art award in Australia.
Jeannie has close family connections to some of Australia's top names in art. Her mother is well known Utopian artist Dolly Mills and her uncle is the late Greeny Purvis, a successful entrant in the 21st NATSIAA. Her great aunt is the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye, dubbed by art experts as one of the world's best modern and abstract artists. It is through these influences that Jeannie began to paint, bringing her own style and dynamic to the world of Aboriginal Art.
UTOPIA
Utopia has produced some of the most recognisable names in Aboriginal art and is notable for its strong tradition of discovering female artists. This continues today with a new generation of talented painters who are inspired by greats such as Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Gloria Petyarre, Kathleen Petyarre and Ada Bird who worked at Utopia.
The legacy of these pioneering woman is a diversity of style and approach that welcomes hundreds of other artists from the Utopia clan groups.
It is a region of approximately 5,000 sq km north-east of Alice Springs and is home to around 2,000 aboriginal people. The region largely lies on aboriginal owned land called Urapuntja, it is made up of several larger communities and some very small ones!
Art is by far the largest source of employment in an area which lacks employment opportunities and skills. There are well over 250 professional artists in the region, most of them have never attended an art class!
The creative movement in Utopia began with batik and the work they produced came to international attention and was exhibited around the world. When painting reached the communities in the late 1980’s, acrylic paint on canvas with its quick drying and no mess properties, soon overtook batik.
This is a multi-generational art movement that has led Utopia's artists to become leaders in female aboriginal art.