Roseanne Morton Petyarre / Bush Medicine Leaves (RM826)

Roseanne Morton Petyarre is a rising talent in the world of contemporary Aboriginal art. Born in 1984 at Atneltye (Boundary Bore), in the Utopia region approximately 280km north-east of Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Roseanne was raised in a traditional way and attended school locally so she could remain close to her family and community.

She comes from a renowned family of artists. Her late mother, Gracie Morton Pwerle, was a highly respected artist and a senior custodian of the Anwekety (Bush Plum) Dreaming. Gracie began painting in the 1980s on batik alongside her mother, Myrtle Petyarre, and her sisters — Roseanne’s aunties — Gloria, Kathleen, Violet, Nancy, and Ada Bird Petyarre. All are internationally celebrated artists whose work helped bring the Utopia region to global attention.

From a young age, Roseanne absorbed the cultural knowledge and artistic skills passed down through her mother, aunties, and grandmothers. She paints the Anwekety (Bush Plum) Dreaming, just as her mother did — a story of deep cultural significance involving ceremony, ancestral connections, and the seasonal cycles of this important bush food.

Roseanne’s paintings are composed of flowing brushstrokes that depict the bush plum leaves scattered across Country. The layered movement and colour variations in her work represent the shifting stages of the plant’s life cycle — from the fruiting of the bush plum to the changing colours of its leaves throughout the seasons.

Roseanne lives at Utopia with her husband, Papunya artist James Morris, and their two children. Gentle and immensely talented, she is proudly continuing the artistic traditions of her family and community. With her strong cultural foundation and growing recognition, Roseanne is poised for a long and successful career.

In this painting, Roseanne Morton Petyarre depicts Bush Medicine Leaves, a story connected to the traditional plant knowledge of the women from her family’s Country in the Utopia region.

For generations, Aboriginal women have gathered leaves and other parts of native plants to prepare bush medicines. Depending on the plant and its purpose, the leaves may be crushed, soaked, boiled or mixed with animal fats to create treatments used for cuts, wounds, bites, rashes, aches and other ailments. This knowledge has been carefully passed down through families, together with an understanding of where the plants grow, when they should be collected and how they are prepared.

Roseanne represents the leaves through layers of broad, rhythmic brushstrokes that flow across the canvas. The repeated forms suggest leaves scattered across Country and moving together in the wind, while the changing colours reflect the seasonal transformation of the landscape.

Roseanne has often painted this story using smaller, finely layered leaves, but she is now also exploring a larger and more expressive style of brushwork. These bold leaf forms create a strong sense of movement and vitality and recall the larger Bush Medicine Leaf paintings created by her late aunty, Gloria Petyarre, during the later years of her career.

Through this work, Roseanne celebrates the healing properties of bush medicine and the cultural knowledge handed down through the women of her family. The painting also reflects her continuing development as an artist, drawing upon a strong family tradition while creating a distinctive interpretation of her own.