Roseanne Morton Petyarre / Bush Medicine Leaves (RM827)

Roseanne Morton Petyarre was born in 1984 at Atneltye (Boundary Bore), in the Utopia homelands north-east of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Growing up in this remote desert community, Roseanne remained close to her family and Country, learning cultural knowledge and artistic practice from the women around her.

Roseanne is the daughter of the late Gracie Morton Pwerle (c.1956-2024), a highly respected Utopia artist and senior custodian of the Anwekety (Bush Plum) Dreaming. Through her mother, Roseanne belongs to one of the great artistic families of Utopia, a remarkable lineage that includes celebrated painters such as Myrtle, Gloria, Kathleen, Violet, Nancy and Ada Bird Petyarre.

From a young age, Roseanne watched her mother and other women of her family paint, learning both the stories of their ancestral Country and the techniques through which these could be expressed on canvas. She continues important family subjects including Anwekety (Bush Plum) Dreaming, Bush Medicine Leaves and Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming, an ancestral story passed down to her by her late mother, Gracie Morton Pwerle. Through these works, Roseanne carries forward cultural knowledge passed through generations of women in her family while developing a distinctive painting style of her own.

Her Anwekety paintings continue a story for which her mother Gracie was a senior custodian. Through layered colour, repeated marks and flowing forms, these works evoke the bush plum, its seasonal abundance and the movement of women across Country gathering the fruit. Anwekety is associated not simply with bush food, but with Country, ceremony and knowledge carried through generations.

Roseanne’s Bush Medicine Leaves paintings connect her to another important Utopia artistic tradition. Her great-aunt, Gloria Petyarre, whose celebrated Leaves won the Wynne Prize in 1999, became particularly renowned for transforming the movement of leaves into sweeping fields of rhythmic brushwork. Roseanne has developed her own interpretations of this tradition, working with both finely tapered small leaves and bold, expansive leaf forms.

In some paintings, hundreds of delicate brushstrokes gather, overlap and radiate across the canvas, creating swirling currents of movement. In others, Roseanne enlarges the leaves into broad, confident strokes of colour, giving the composition a more open and painterly quality. Across both approaches, her work has a remarkable sense of rhythm and movement.

Roseanne continues to live and paint in the Utopia region with her husband, Papunya artist James Morris, and their family, carrying forward the cultural and artistic knowledge passed to her while continuing to develop her own contemporary expression.

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

For countless generations, Aboriginal women have gathered native plants for their healing and restorative properties. Knowledge of where particular plants grow, when they should be collected and how they are prepared has been carefully passed from one generation to the next. Depending upon the plant and its purpose, leaves may be dried, crushed or prepared with natural fats and oils to create traditional bush medicines. This knowledge also forms part of the broader cultural and ceremonial life of the women of Utopia.

Roseanne’s Bush Medicine Leaves form part of a celebrated Utopia painting tradition closely associated with her extended family. Her great-aunt Gloria Petyarre became internationally renowned for her flowing leaf paintings, and many women of subsequent generations have continued to interpret the subject in their own individual ways.

Roseanne works with both fine, densely layered leaves and larger, more expressive leaf forms. In her small-leaf paintings, hundreds of tapered brushstrokes radiate, overlap and change direction, creating an intricate sense of movement, as though leaves are being swept and turned by the wind across Country. Her large-leaf works use broader, more painterly strokes, allowing individual leaves and changes of colour to become a stronger part of the composition.

The shifting colours and repeated forms create a feeling of growth, abundance and regeneration. Individual leaves become part of a larger rhythm, reflecting continuing cycles of Country and the knowledge associated with gathering, preparing and using its plants.

Through these paintings, Roseanne honours knowledge passed through the women of her family while extending one of Utopia’s most recognisable artistic traditions in a style that is distinctly her own.