Freda Price Petyarre / Country (FP223)

Freda Price Petyarre is an Anmatyerre artist born in 1984 in the Utopia region of the Northern Territory. She comes from an important Utopian artistic family and grew up surrounded by painting, culture and the creative practices of the women in her family. Her mother is acclaimed artist Anna Price Petyarre, her aunt is artist Delvine Petyarre, and her grandmother was the late Glory Ngale.

Glory Ngale was a senior Anmatyerre woman and a significant artist in the Utopia batik movement. Her textiles were included in the landmark 1988 Utopia batik exhibition, and she later travelled to Indonesia as part of an important cultural exchange involving Utopia artists and Indonesian batik makers. This strong tradition of pattern, flowing line and colour has continued through subsequent generations of Freda’s family.

Encouraged by her mother and other family members, Freda developed her own highly detailed approach to painting Country. Much of her work relates to the lands surrounding Atneltye, also known as Boundary Bore, including its winding dry creek beds, soakages, sandhills, waterholes and seasonal plant life. These features are presented from an aerial perspective through fields of fine dots, repeated curved forms, flowing pathways and intricately worked areas of pattern.

Although her work shares the precision and topographical qualities associated with her mother’s paintings, Freda has developed a recognisable style of her own. Her compositions can range from restrained combinations of black, white, blue and green to rich arrangements of red, yellow and ochre. Across these changing palettes, her paintings retain a strong sense of movement and connection, bringing together Country, water, plant life and places of cultural importance.

Freda continues to live and paint on the Utopia homelands with her family.

In her Country paintings, Freda Price Petyarre presents an intricate aerial view of the Utopia homelands in Central Australia. Fine dot work, concentric forms, repeated arches and flowing lines create a layered landscape of sandhills, dry creek beds, soakages, waterholes, vegetation and places of cultural significance.

The clustered curved forms and delicate linear patterns may also reference bush yam plants, their seeds and flowers, which are recurring subjects within Freda’s family painting tradition. Bush yam has long been an important source of food in the Utopia region, particularly following rain, when the plants regenerate and grow more abundantly.

Rather than depicting Country from a single viewpoint, Freda brings many elements together across the canvas. Pathways move between circular sites, areas of vegetation appear to spread and regenerate, and densely patterned sections suggest the changing textures of the land. Her colours vary between paintings, from striking black-and-white compositions to cool blues, greens and purples, and warm reds, yellows and ochres, allowing each work to express a different mood while remaining connected to the same Country and inherited cultural knowledge.