Bernadine Johnson Kemarre | 'Bush Medicine, 2024' | 88x140cm

Code: PPFABJ888

Artist: Bernadine Johnson Kemarre

Title: Bush Medicine

Area: Utopia, NT

Community: Arrernte

Medium: Acrylic On Linen

Size: 88x140cm

Year: 2024

In Bush Medicine, Bernadine Johnson Kemarre paints one of the most important women's subjects of the Utopia region. Women gather medicinal leaves on country, then crush or boil them or work them into balms that treat illness and keep families well. That knowledge passes from one generation of women to the next. On her canvas the leaves become a field in constant motion. She lays down each leaf in a single fine stroke over shifting tones of colour, so the surface seems to ripple like foliage moving in the desert wind. The painting celebrates the generosity of country and records the healing knowledge held by the women of Central Australia.

Bernadine Johnson Kemarre is an Arrernte artist, born in 1974 at Ltyentye Apurte (Santa Teresa), south-east of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. She had a traditional upbringing, learning the stories and customs of her country from her parents, aunts and uncles before going to school in Alice Springs.

Through marriage she joined the Petyarre family of Utopia. From the late 1980s, the women painters of that Eastern Desert community changed the course of Australian art. Bernadine comes from a family of artists that includes Abie Loy Kemarre, Josie Petrick Kemarre and her sister-in-law Anna Price Petyarre. She began painting in the late 1990s, working in the tradition set by Utopia's senior women, among them Gloria Petyarre.

Bush Medicine Leaves is the centre of her practice, and she has made the subject distinctly her own. Working in fine, layered strokes and subtly blended colour, she builds dense fields of leaves that seem to turn and drift across the canvas. Her paintings also draw on bush tucker, medicinal plants, native animals and the women's stories passed down to her. She now divides her time between Central Australia and Adelaide, and galleries across Australia show her work.