Kathleen Petyarre

Kathleen Petyarre (born 1940) is an eminent Australian Aboriginal artist, known for her paintings displaying an extremely refined layering technique with intricate dotting. Her art refers directly to her country and her Dreamings, concepts that may be difficult to grasp for the non-Aboriginal viewer. However, the vastness of the country can be clearly felt in the landscapes of Petyarre's paintings, which 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. They have been described as: "magisterial works that can be likened to symphonic compositions" (Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA). Petyarre's painstaking and virtuosic method of applying countless dots with kebab sticks of various sizes means she typically spends many days, sometimes weeks, on one canvas and has thus avoided the dangers of overproduction, widespread in Aboriginal art.