Charlene Carrington / Texas Downs

Charlene was raised at Turkey Creek (Warmun) in a family at the heart of East Kimberley ochre painting. Her parents are Churchill Cann and Sade Carrington, and as a child she learned by watching senior painters such as her grandfather Hector Jandany and Jack Britten at work.

Her paintings return again and again to Texas Downs Station, known as Ngarrgooroon, with its springs, hills and waterholes, and to the Ngarrangkarni stories handed down by her grandparents. She still prepares garliwan, a bloodwood sap binder used by earlier Gija artists, and her style blends her mother's careful line with her father's broad, swirling fields of ochre. Her portrait My dad, Churchill Cann was an Archibald Prize finalist in 2020, and her daughter April Nulgit now carries the family tradition into a fourth generation.