Bernadine Johnson Kemarre / Bush Medicine Ceremony (BJ348)

Bernadine Johnson Kemarre is an Arrernte artist born in 1974 at Ltyentye Apurte, also known as Santa Teresa, approximately 80 kilometres south-east of Alice Springs in Central Australia. She spent her early years growing up in community, learning about Country, ceremony, bush foods and traditional plant knowledge before later attending school in Alice Springs.

Bernadine comes from a strong artistic family with connections to the Utopia region. Her extended family includes well-known artists Abie Loy Kemarre and Josie Petrick Kemarre, while artist Anna Price Petyarre is her sister-in-law. Bernadine married artist Stephen Pitjara Martin, Anna’s brother, and spent time living at Utopia, further strengthening her connection with the important artistic traditions of the region.

Bernadine began painting in the late 1990s, drawing upon the cultural knowledge she had learned from an early age. Her works explore important women’s stories, native plants, bush foods and traditional bush medicine. She is particularly known for her Bush Medicine Leaves paintings, although her broader body of work has also included bush flowers, yams and other stories associated with Country and family.

Her paintings are characterised by finely controlled brushwork, intricate dotting and a strong understanding of colour. Repeated leaf forms often radiate and flow across the canvas, creating a sense of movement and growth, while subtle shifts between complementary and closely related colours give her larger works remarkable depth. In many of her Bush Medicine paintings, delicate dots surrounding the leaves represent seeds and the continuing regeneration of the plants.

Bernadine’s work has been included in exhibitions around Australia, including the 2019 Tarnanthi exhibition Karra wadlu yaitya purruna: Bush shrubs make you healthy in Adelaide and the 2024 NAIDOC exhibition Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud at Adelaide Airport. Her work is also represented in the collection of the Museum of International Folk Art in New Mexico, which holds her 2019 painting Circle of Life Dreaming.

This artwork depicts the beauty of the desert after rain, when wildflowers bloom across the Country and the landscape comes alive with colour.

Bernadine paints an aerial view of women’s ceremonial gathering places and the native plants, flowers and seeds found throughout her homeland in Central Australia. The large circular flower forms represent blooming desert flowers, while the flowing lines symbolise the movement of women travelling across Country as they gather bush tucker, bush medicine and seeds.

The smaller floral motifs and leaf forms scattered throughout the composition represent the many medicinal and food plants traditionally collected by Aboriginal women. Bush medicine leaves are a central theme in Bernadine’s work and are an important part of traditional healing practices. Some leaves can be crushed or boiled and mixed with animal fat to create remedies used to treat cuts, wounds and skin ailments.

Bernadine’s paintings celebrate the connection between women, Country and traditional knowledge. Through her vibrant use of colour and intricate detail, she captures the energy, movement and abundance of the desert landscape during times of renewal and growth.