Collection: Julie Pwerl Beasley

"Epenarra artists paint many things. We paint the landscape and the bush tucker and bush medicines. When we go hunting, we see the landscape and we paint the landscape around us. We see the seasons change and we paint this.

The land is special to us and our children. We keep the knowledge of our land to pass to the children."

Julie Pwerl Beasley paints from her traditional cultural knowledge. Formed with a combination of repetitive dot-making and brushwork her sweeping landscapes depict the landscapes of Ilytwelepenty (the Davenport Ranges). Hills and flowers emerge from nets of dotwork which ebb across the canvas, often distorting otherwise fully formed figures so that small details appear through a haze of dotting; dust and bush medicine seeds blowing through the air with the fabled Barkly breeze. 

Julie distorts perspective so that tiny desert flowers are engorged to the size of ranges, suggesting the vastness of the landscape and signifying the importance of local flora to the region’s ecosystem and indeed the traditional way of life for which local flora is crucial to survival, providing an indicator of seasonal change, sustenance and medicine. 

Julie lives in Wutunugurra (Epenarra), her Father's and Grandmother's country. Julie has been involved in the development of arts in the community for decades, having begun her creative practice in the early 2000s alongside her mother Carol Beasley. Today she is the senior arts worker at the Epenarra art centre.