VIOLET PETYARRE
Violet Petyarre (c.1938)
Arnkerrth Awelye (Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming), 1999
82 x 56 cm. Acrylic on canvas.
ARTIST
Violet Petyarre (c.1938), Arnkerrth Awelye (Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming), 1999
Based in Atnangkere, Utopia, Violet is one of the celebrated Petyarre Sisters, and niece to Emily Kam Kngwarray, emerging from the batik movement in the late 1970s and transitioning to acrylics during the pivotal 1988–89 Utopia Women’s Paintings project. Her powerful work is held in collections such as the National Gallery of Australia and Holmes à Court.
Custodian of the Arnkerrth (Mountain Devil Lizard) Dreaming, tied to her father’s country, Violet often channels this ancestral story through her paintings.WORK
This artwork intertwines women’s ceremonial body-paint patterns (Awelye) with the ancestral path of Arnkerrth. Strong linear motifs and shifting ochre tones evoke the lizard’s spiny camouflage and ritual significance, an intimate, aerial map of land, ritual, and ancestral law.