June Peters / Texas (Ngarrgaroon) Hills (19975)

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.

In this painting, June Peters depicts the hills of her family Country at Texas Downs Station (Ngarrgaroon) in the East Kimberley, where both she and her mother were born.

“I have painted my family’s Country, Texas Downs, on the eastern side near Purnululu.”

June describes the hills of Texas Downs as larger than those found in nearby Purnululu. Across the canvas, their rounded forms rise through broad layers of Country, while winding lines suggest the waterways and tributaries that continue to hold water through the dry season.

The varied colours reflect June’s intimate knowledge of this landscape. Soft pinks and mauves recall the skies at sunrise and sunset, grey tones represent water moving through the land, and gentle greens suggest the Country after rain. Rich golds, browns and reds convey the warmth of the earth and the fertile grazing land for which Texas Downs is known.

Through her exceptional command of natural ochre, June creates an unusually rich and varied palette from the traditional base pigments. The subtle shifts in colour bring depth and movement to the landscape, capturing the changing character of the hills across the seasons and throughout the day.

This is a deeply personal view of Ngarrgaroon, shaped by family, memory and June’s continuing connection to the Country where her life began.