As an
elder and ancestral custodian of the
Anmatyerr people, Kngwarray had for decades painted for ceremonial purposes in the Utopia region. She became known for her precise and detailed approach she worked with
batik for 11 years and became one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of
Indigenous Australian art. She is particularly notable also for being a female artist, for having only started painting in her 70s, and for her prolificacy: over her eight years as an artist, she produced more than 3,000 paintings – around one per day. According to Bryce, Aboriginal women in the region wanted to learn handcrafts because they were especially suited for a traditional lifestyle. Bryce and Green had imported the medium of batik to the Northern Territories from
Indonesia in 1974. By the time Kngwarray was introduced to the technique, Aboriginal artists had adapted key parts of the process to suit their own preferences. The Indonesian technique of applying wax with a pen-like instrument called a
canting, for example, had been replaced by brushes, which often produced broader, more animated patterns on the fabric. The introduction of batik marked a new era for Aboriginal women in the Northern Territories. Up to that point, their role had been to assist male painters, with only a few women ever creating their own works. In 1978, Kngwarray and other prominent Aboriginal artists founded the Utopia Women's Batik Group, Initially a communal project, the program evolved into a framework where artists could develop their own individual styles. Kngwarray's batik work shows elements that recur in her later paintings, including the
awelye (
body painting), emus, goannas, and other flora and fauna of her Country. Kngwarray once described her transition to acrylic painting as a less labor-intensive process that better suited her advancing years:I did batik at first, and then after doing that I learned more and more and then I changed over to painting for good...Then it was canvas. I gave up on...fabric to avoid all the boiling to get the wax out. I got a bit lazy – I gave it up because it was too much hard work. I finally got sick of it ... I didn't want to continue with the hard work batik required – boiling the fabric over and over, lighting fires, and using up all the soap powder, over and over. That's why I gave up batik and changed over to canvas – it was easier. My eyesight deteriorated as I got older, and because of that I gave up batik on silk – it was better for me to just paint.Her method was to place large sections of canvas on the ground and sit on them cross-legged. She applied paint using a long brush to reach across and into the creation. In one account, a dealer explained the presence of dog prints within a specific painting as a natural part of her ground-level method: "The dog walked across it," he said, "and she couldn't have cared less." In 1995, in the last year of her life, she painted
Anwerlarr anganenty ("Big yam Dreaming"), on a huge canvase measuring over by nearly .
Subject matter and themes Works by Kngwarray stem from a deep connection her tribal homeland, Alhalkere. The
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia describes her subject matter as the "essence" of that region, with references to flora, fauna and Dreamtime figures from her environment. These include: •
Arlatyeye (
pencil yam) •
Arkerrthe (mountain devil lizard) •
Ntange (grass seed) •
Tingu (a Dreamtime pup) •
Ankerre (
emu) •
Intekwe (a favourite food of emus, a small plant) •
Atnwerle (green bean) •
Kame (yam seed pod) The
pencil yam, or
anwerlarr, a
vine with heart-shaped leaves and
seed pods that resemble beans, She painted many works on this theme; often her first actions at the start of a painting were to put down the yam tracking lines. a moral code based on "ancestral heroes whose pioneering travels gave form, shape, and meaning to the land, seas, and skies in a long-ago creative era." These ceremonial marks are therefore more than basic visual designs. They are a "ritual re-enactment of the Ancestors' Dreamtime travelling (sic) which, in Aboriginal mythology, is synonymous with the creation of the world." Visual elements related to
The Dreaming were important parts of the Desert Art Movement at
Papunya Tula, where Kngwarray first began to develop her skills as a painter. Formed by community elders in 1971 with the support of
Geoffey Bardon, the school encouraged artists to develop their own ideas when painting on canvas. One familiar style was to overlap masses of tiny dots to create the optical effect of a
heat shimmer, which appears in works by Kngwarray as well as those of
Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula. The influence of Desert Art also appears in her use of aerial perspective. In 1992, Kngwarray began to join her dots to form lines, creating multicoloured parallel horizontal and vertical stripes that suggested rivers and desert terrain. She also began to use larger brushes during this period, which produced heavier, less intricate dots on the canvas. In 1993, Kngwarray added patches of colour along with the dots, which created the effect of coloured rings. An example is
Alaqura Profusion, which was made with a
shaving brush in what she called her "dump dump" style, using very bright colours. That technique also appears in
My Mothers Country and
Emu Country (1994).
The Alhalkere Suite (1993) was a huge
installation comprising 22 canvases, depicting her Country after flooding and regeneration, in a style similar to
Expressionist art. For many years, her varied style attracted labels from the
art world such as
modernism and
abstraction, placing them in the traditions of
Western art. However, it is argued by Indigenous Australian curators that her work is deeply rooted in Aboriginal Australian traditions, in particular,
connection to Country. ==Recognition and awards==