June Peters / Texas (Ngarrgaroon) Hills (19892)

June Peters was born in 1962 beneath a tree in a creek bed on Texas Downs Station (Ngarrgaroon) in the East Kimberley. Her connection to this Country runs deeply through her life and her art, and the distinctive hills, waterways and cultural sites of the region remain among the most important subjects in her paintings.

June lost both her mother and father at a very young age and was raised in part by the late Madigan Thomas, a senior Gija Law woman, cultural leader and important early ochre artist, and her husband Sandy Thomas, a respected Traditional Elder. They treated June as a daughter and played a pivotal role in her upbringing, passing on cultural knowledge and taking her out on Country.

Growing up among some of the East Kimberley’s most significant artists and cultural leaders, June learned about Country, Ngarrangkarni stories and the traditions of ochre painting from senior Gija artists including Jack Britten, Madigan Thomas and Lena Nyadbi. These elders devoted much of their lives to passing cultural knowledge, stories and painting techniques on to younger generations.

June also belongs to an extraordinary artistic family. Her mother was one of five sisters from Texas Downs Station, including Rita Tinmarra, wife of the celebrated artist Rover Thomas, making Rover June’s uncle by marriage. This extended family has produced a remarkable number of highly accomplished artists, and June’s eldest daughter, Deanne Peters, has also followed the family’s artistic tradition.

Through her mother, father and extended family, June has cultural connections to a broad expanse of Gija Country. Her paintings depict places including Texas Downs, Purnululu, the Ord River, Doon Doon and the Country surrounding her home at Mandangala Community on Glen Hill Station. She continues to travel through Country, painting places she knows intimately and the stories that belong to them.

One of the most remarkable aspects of June’s practice is her exceptional understanding of ochre colour. Working from the traditional base pigments of brown, red, yellow and white ochres, together with black charcoal, she is able to create an extraordinary range of tones and shades. Through careful mixing and preparation, June produces subtle greens, greys, purples, oranges, pinks and many other colours, giving her paintings a richness and variety rarely seen in natural ochre work. Her instinctive understanding of colour is one of the defining qualities of her practice and sets her work apart.

June’s paintings range from bold, heavily textured landscapes to finely detailed compositions with restrained palettes. Whether depicting the monumental forms of Purnululu, the red hills of Texas Downs, winding rivers, waterholes or more intimate places known through family and experience, her paintings are grounded in a strong sense of place and personal connection to Country.

June currently lives at Mandangala Community on Glen Hill Station. She is the mother of eight children and grandmother of eleven, and maintains close connections with her extended family at Warmun.

June’s work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally and continues the remarkable ochre painting tradition of the East Kimberley in a style that is distinctly her own. Her paintings form part of a living artistic and cultural lineage, carrying forward the knowledge of the elders who raised and taught her while expressing her own deep relationship with Gija Country.

I have painted my family’s country, Texas Downs (Ngarrgaroon), on the eastern side near Purnululu.

The hills are a little bit bigger on Texas than in the Bungle Bungles. The hills to the north are called Red Butte Country.

The time of year in this painting is dry time but there’s always water from the tributaries of the Ord and not far from this place is Fish Hole which has water all year round, it’s not too far from Turkey Creek (where June’s family resides), so I can take my grandchildren there for swimming. That’s one of my favourite place on Texas Downs.