Shirley Purdie is a contemporary Indigenous Australian art

Contemporary Indigenous Australian art

Contemporary Indigenous Australian art is the modern art work produced by Indigenous Australians. It is generally regarded as beginning with a painting movement that started at Papunya, northwest of Alice Springs, Northern Territory in 1971, involving artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri...

ist, notable for winning the 2007 Blake Prize for religious art. Purdie was born at Gilburn, or Mabel Downs Station, in Western Australia's Kimberley region in 1948, and is a painter at Warmun community.

Life

Purdie was born at Gilburn, or Mabel Downs Station, in Western Australia's Kimberley region in 1948, daughter of Madigan Thomas. She moved to Warmun, not far from her birthplace, where she lives and paints. She is married to artist Gordon Barney.

Art

Purdie was taught by her mother and by major Kimberley Indigenous artist Queenie McKenzie

Queenie McKenzie

Queenie McKenzie was a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist. She was born on Old Texas Station, on the western bank of the Ord River in the East Kimberley. Her works have sold at auction for $8000 to $15000.-External links:...

, two women who were among the first to paint ar Warmun in the early 1980s.

Purdie has won several awards, including the Blake Prize for religious art in 2007, for her work Stations of the Cross. The work portrays the Christian iconography

Iconography

Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...

 of the 14 stations of the cross

Stations of the Cross

Stations of the Cross refers to the depiction of the final hours of Jesus, and the devotion commemorating the Passion. The tradition as chapel devotion began with St...

, but also the history of conflict and racial violence in the artist's community in the 1920s and 1930s. Purdie's works are held by major galleries, including the National Gallery of Australia

National Gallery of Australia

The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...

, which has her 1996 lithograph, Giwiwan - Bow River Country. This print shows the influence of the painting style of major artist Rover Thomas

Rover Thomas

Rover Thomas Joolama was an Indigenous Australian artist.-Early life:He was born at Gunawaggi in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. At the age of 10 Rover and his family moved to the Kimberley where, as was usual at the time, he began work as a stockman...

.