I come from Martu Country, where the red earth teaches and remembers. I was raised on Beyondie Cattle Station, where the dirt wasn’t just something you walked on, it was something sacred, something alive. The Rabbit-Proof Fence ran near our homestead like an old scar across the land. But for us, it was the verandah where the real stories lived. Granny would sit with us as the stars came out, her voice carrying the old knowledge, shaping who we were. Those stories weren’t history… they were instructions. They still live in my art, in every mark I make.
Location of Beyondie Cattle Station
On the front Verandah with my Cousins, Beyondie Cattle Station, 1969
Art became my way of walking back through Country, even when I couldn’t be there. Every dot, every colour I place, I do it with care. The land speaks in those patterns. Red ochre of the sand, deep black of burnt wood, flashes of wildflower yellow… they all come from memory, from the world I knew as a child. Sometimes my paintings are playful, dingoes with glasses, rabbits hiding in the corners, but that joy isn’t shallow. It’s part of how we hold each other through hard times. It’s how we carry culture forward: with strength, with warmth, with spirit.
Rabbit Proof Fence (484 Mile Peg), 2025
Acrylic on canvas – 75 x 75 cm, 29.5 x 29.5 in.
There is pain in my journey too, and I don’t hide from it. I grew up safe, but later I knew violence that left marks on more than just skin. Still, I keep creating. Because art helps me hold both the grief and the healing. Our culture has always known how to do this… to honour sorrow and to make space for hope. My paintings carry those layers. They show that Country, like people, holds both fire and shelter, both struggle and beauty.
Even though I live away from Martu Country now, my spirit is still tethered to it. I work from a small rural town in New South Wales, painting in an old shop that’s become my studio. It’s not the desert, but the stories still flow strong. I go back when I can, for funerals, for family, to sit with the land again. And when people look at my work and feel something… something they might not be able to name, I know the painting has done its job. It’s carried a piece of Martu story into their world. That, for me, is the quiet strength of art. It connects us. It reminds us who we are.
