Bernadine, born 1974 at Ltyentye Apurte (Santa Teresa) in the NT, paints the story of the Desert Yam, known to her people as Bush Plum, a plant found growing underground on her family’s country.

What makes this small 30cm x 30cm canvas stand out is the tight sunburst formation of the leaves radiating from a central point, creating something that reads as both a living plant and a geometric pattern. It has the intimacy of a botanical study and the authority of a Dreaming story in one.

Freda was born in 1984 in Utopia, NT, and is the daughter of Anna Price Petyarre, with both artists represented in this very list, a reflection of the strength of this remarkable painting family.

This 60cm x 45cm canvas presents an aerial view of her family homelands, where different patterns and textures represent the varied features of Country. Fields of fine white dotting sit alongside areas of vibrant red and orange, forming a patchwork of sandhills, waterholes and ceremonial places across the landscape.

The strong contrast between the delicate white markings and the warm desert

Jeannie is the daughter of Dolly Mills Petyarre, a traditional healer (ngangker), and her Yam Dreaming paintings carry that lineage.

What makes this 30cm x 30cm canvas genuinely surprising is its palette and texture: vertical brushstrokes of pink, orange, teal, orange and red, bold and almost textile-like, represent the flower of the Bush Yam, while fine white dot work embedded throughout represents the seed.

Freda Price Petyarre paints her family’s Utopia homeland from an aerial perspective, mapping the sandhills, waterholes and ceremonial places that define Country.

This 30cm x 30cm canvas is set against a deep black background, with intricate fields of red, orange and white patterning forming the shifting textures of the landscape. The strong contrast between the dark ground and the desert colours gives the painting a bold, graphic presence while still capturing the rhythms and movement of Country seen from above.

This smaller work has a striking visual impact and offers a beautiful introduction to Freda’s interpretation of her ancestral land.

This 50cm x 50cm canvas stands apart in any collection of Aboriginal art. Rather than dots or leaves, Reg paints a bold, clean kangaroo silhouette in an outline style that draws on top end rock art traditions, simple, direct and powerful.

The earthy palette of ochre, brown and cream gives it a timeless quality. It’s the kind of piece that works equally well in a contemporary apartment or a traditional home, and for someone new to Aboriginal art, it’s immediately legible without sacrificing authenticity.

Louise Numina Napananka was born at Stirling Station near Tennant Creek and is part of the remarkable Numina family of artists, with several sisters who paint the Bush Medicine Leaves story. Her paintings celebrate the leaves of plants traditionally used for healing by Aboriginal people across Central Australia.

Against a dark background, the leaves radiate outward in bursts of soft lilacs, creamy whites and warm yellows, creating a rhythmic pattern across the canvas. The layered brushwork captures the feeling of dried leaves falling and blowing across the desert floor, giving the painting both movement and a sense of quiet harmony.

This piece sits beautifully within the Bush Medicine Leaves tradition while showing Louise’s own gentle palette and flowing style.

Tanya, born 1972 in the Aileron/Utopia region, counts the late Minnie Pwerle and Gloria Petyarre among her relatives, an artistic heritage that shows in the confidence of her brushwork.

This 30cm canvas is packed with a lush celebration of the flowers and seeds that erupt from the desert after rain: bold flower forms, circular bush tucker shapes, dot-patterned leaves, all in a palette that runs from deep burgundy and forest green to coral, pink and golden yellow. It has the joy of a garden in full bloom.

Eddie, born 1961 in Katherine NT and from Naiyalindir country on the Roper River, his bush name is Taiita, brings one of the most distinctive subjects in all of Aboriginal art to canvas. Mimi Spirits are tiny, spindly beings who live in the rock escarpments of the Top End, hunting and fishing at night and retreating into the cracks of the rocks at dawn.

Eddie renders his Mimi as an elongated white figure set against a deep black ground, overlaid with fine cross-hatching in white, warm brown and yellow. The layered linework creates a subtle vibration of light against dark, giving the work an ancient, almost otherworldly presence.

Delvine, born 1982 in the Utopia region, is the younger sister of Anna Price Petyarre and a member of one of Central Australia’s most celebrated artistic families. Her mother was the late Gloria (Glory) Ngale.

This 30cm x 30cm Country painting is striking for its bold black ground, overlaid with fine white dotting and soft tonal layers of light and deep blue. The cool palette gives her Atneltyeye homeland the feeling of an aerial map at dusk, riverbeds and landforms emerging through rhythmic dot work.

The restraint of colour, combined with the depth created by the blues, makes it one of the most quietly powerful works on this list.

Tommy, born 1966 in Cunnamulla in Southwest Queensland, is from the Mardgany tribe and paints in a figurative realist style found almost nowhere else in Aboriginal art.

This wide panoramic canvas (34cm x 60cm) shows silhouetted figures gathered around a small campfire beneath a night sky, with emus moving across the open landscape. The background shifts from deep black into rich blue, scattered with stars and illuminated by a bright moon.

The contrast between the glowing firelight, the night sky and the dark silhouettes gives the work a quiet cinematic quality, and the elongated horizontal format makes it especially striking on a wall.

Nellie, born 1962 in Papunya and the younger sister of celebrated artist Elizabeth Marks Nakamarra, was taught by some of the founders of the desert art movement including Old Mick Namarrari and Turkey Tolson.

Her Women’s Ceremony paintings combine Women’s Dreaming with My Country, the women travelling through the landscape collecting medicines, water and bush tucker. This 60cm x 22cm canvas is notably elongated, like a scroll or frieze, with richly saturated spiralling dot work in reds, oranges and purples.

Nellie is known for experimenting with colour, and this is a vivid example of that freedom.

Anna, born c.1965 in the Utopia region NT, is the daughter of the late Gloria Ngale and niece of the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye, one of Australia’s most celebrated artists internationally. Anna began her professional career in 1996 and her Country paintings reflect a deep connection to her Atneltyeye homeland.

This 30cm x 30cm canvas is built on a bold black background with dense fields of fine white dotting mapping the land from an aerial perspective. Strong red dotted lines radiate from a central waterhole and move across the composition like pathways or ceremonial tracks through Country. The striking contrast of black, white and red gives the work a powerful graphic clarity while still conveying the intricate rhythms of the landscape.

Abie Loy, born 1972 at Utopia Station, comes from one of Australia’s most distinguished artistic families: daughter of Margaret Loy Pula (2012 Wynne Prize winner), granddaughter of Kathleen Petyarre, niece of Gloria Petyarre.

Her work is held in the Art Gallery of South Australia among other significant collections. This 40cm x 40cm canvas celebrates the leaves of the antywerleny, a native wattle plant valued for its healing properties, set against a bold black ground and built up in layers of white and blue brushstrokes.

Thousands of fine marks create a dense, shimmering surface that shifts between delicate pattern and rich texture. This piece represents exceptional value for a work by an artist with a serious exhibition record..

Tony Sorby is a proud descendant of the Kamilaroi people, born in 1953 on the Burra Bee Dee Mission near Coonabarabran, NSW. Like many Aboriginal children of his generation, he was taken from his family as a baby and raised in institutions and foster homes throughout NSW.

It wasn’t until he was 12 that he discovered his Aboriginal heritage, and more than two decades later he was finally reunited with his family. That journey back to Country and identity is what drives every painting he makes.

This 33cm x 50cm work maps the sacred sites, journey tracks, waterholes and meeting grounds of Kamilaroi Country in creams and teal, bold, beautiful and deeply personal. At $320, it is one of the most meaningful works on this list.

Davinder Hart is from the Bibbulmun and Katanning mob of the Noongar nation, who has spent years deepening his cultural knowledge through the teachings of his cultural grandfather and uncles, and through time spent sharing culture at Uluru with visitors from around the world.

This 60cm x 30cm painting pays respect to the Dhinawan, the Emu constellation seen in the dark patches of the Milky Way, not in the stars themselves. Emu tracks move in two vertical columns across a rich dark-brown dot-stippled background, linking sky and earth in a powerful visual rhythm.

It’s a work with a story that genuinely surprises people who’ve never heard of the dark constellation tradition.

June, born 1962 on Texas Downs Station (Ngarrgaroon), is the niece of the legendary ochre artist Rover Thomas and was taught by the first generation of Kimberley ochre painters, Jack Britten, Madigan Thomas and Lena Nyadbi.

She lives at Mandangala Community (Glen Hill Station) and has eight children and many grandchildren. Working in natural ochres on canvas, June paints the hills and country surrounding Texas Downs Station, her traditional homeland in the East Kimberley. In this 30cm x 40cm work the softly rounded hill forms are outlined with rhythmic white dotting and warm ochre bands, set against a deep earth-brown ground.

The composition has the quiet strength typical of Kimberley ochre painting, where simple shapes and ancient pigments combine to create a surface full of warmth, depth and connection to Country.

Kathleen Buzzacott, born in Alice Springs in 1970, is of Pitjantjatjara, Scottish and English heritage. Her Mother’s country (Pitlands) spans across the borders of South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and her Language/Tribal Group is Pitjantjatjara and Western Aranda.

She returned to Country at age ten to live with her mother at Hermannsburg, and it’s those childhood memories of growing up out bush that animate her work. Alongside painting she designs jewellery, was a 2024 National Contemporary Art Prize finalist and her designs appear on products through Koh Living. This 30cm x 30cm canvas, a warm swirl of amber, rust and ochre coloured dot work, celebrates those carefree days in the bush with a richness and joy that comes through in every mark.

This work from June Peters’ Bungle Bungles series is painted on a very pale green background that gives the composition a fresh, open feeling.

The familiar beehive domes of Purnululu are built up in bands of cream, soft grey, yellow ochre and deep reddish earth tones, each one outlined with rhythmic white dotting.

The lighter background lifts the forms of the domes and gives the painting a sense of light across the landscape. Painted in natural ochre on canvas, the surface carries the warmth and texture that only earth pigments can produce.

Edna is a Ngarinyin woman and Chairperson of Imintji Community, 220km from Derby WA on the Gibb River Road. She is the daughter of renowned Kimberley artist Jack Dale Mengenen (1920–2013) and spent her childhood beside her father, watching him paint and learning the Law, the stories and the sacred cave sites of Ngarinyin Country.

This 30cm x 30cm ochre and acrylic canvas presents the Wandjina, the creator being, with the bold, elemental authority that Edna inherited from her father: enormous white face, deep-set black eyes, golden ochre striations of the rain headdress, the body dissolving into black-and-white vertical lines. It is both icon and painting in the truest sense.

Petrina, born 1998 in Derby WA, is a third generation West Kimberley artist, the granddaughter of both Jack Dale Mengenen (maternal) and Paddy Bedford (paternal), and the daughter of Edna Dale (the previous work on this list). She was only 12 when her first artworks were included in an exhibition alongside her mother’s and grandfather’s work.

In this bold 30cm x 30cm acrylic canvas, she pairs the Wandjinas with Dumbi, the sacred owl of Ngarinyin Country, two owls and two Wandjinas filling the composition in striking black on red with white detail. The combination of both ancestral beings in one work is unusual, and the graphic confidence is unmistakable.

The lineage behind this painting is extraordinary. Debra, a Pintubi woman born in 1963 at Papunya Camp NT, is the granddaughter of Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, a founding member of the Papunya painting movement, and her uncle is Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri AO, one of Australia’s most celebrated painters.

It was Mitjili Napurrula who encouraged Debra to paint and later passed custodianship of the Watiya Tjuta (trees) Dreaming to her. This 60cm x 45cm canvas presents bold stylised leaf forms in teal blue, fresh greens and soft peach tones set against a pale background.

The strong graphic shapes and clean palette give the painting a striking contemporary feel while still carrying the deep cultural story of the Watiya Tjuta Dreaming.

Delvine Petyarre paints her Atneltyeye homelands from an aerial, topographical perspective, using fine dot work to map the rhythms and features of Country.

In this 60cm x 30cm format, a bold black ground is overlaid with precise white dotting, then punctuated by a strong line of red dots and a cool line of blue dots running through the composition, like pathways or contours cutting across the land. The result is restrained, graphic and quietly powerful, and the elongated format gives it real presence on a wall.

Janet is an Anmatyerre artist from Mulga Bore on the Utopia Homelands, daughter of Margaret Golder and Sammy Pitjara, and married to Ronnie Bird, son of Ada Bird Petyarre. She began painting in 1987 in the tradition of Awelye, women’s ceremonial body paint, passed down through her family.

This 115cm x 20cm canvas is one of the most unusually formatted works on this list: a long, narrow panoramic strip flowing with Awelye body paint designs, flowering bush tucker forms and ceremonial landscape elements in blue, gold, rust and white. At $440 for 115cm of work, the scale and presence are exceptional.

Dora, born 1965, is the youngest daughter of the late Minnie Pwerle and great-niece of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, two of the most significant women in the history of Australian art. Her sister was the late international artist Barbara Weir.

Dora paints the Awelye (women’s ceremonial body paint) and bush tucker designs made famous by her mother, but in her own bold, high-colour style.

On this 60cm x 30cm canvas, circular forms represent waterholes around which the women perform ceremony, while bold brushstrokes render the body paint patterns in primarily strong yellows, reds and whites against a rich black background. The scale and energy of the mark-making is remarkable at this price.

Kathleen, born in Alice Springs in 1970, is of Pitjantjatjara, Scottish and English heritage, with her mother’s country (Pitlands) spanning South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

She returned to Country at age ten and has spent her life painting the landscapes, birds and animals of Central Australia alongside her fine dot work. A 2024 National Contemporary Art Prize finalist, this 30cm x 30cm canvas is an instant conversation starter: two beautifully observed Major Mitchell Cockatoos perch on a branch against a dense background of vibrant orange and purple floral dot patterning.

It bridges wildlife art and Aboriginal art tradition in a way that captivates people who might not know where to start with an Aboriginal art collection.