Roseanne Morton Petyarre / Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming (RM828)

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 the Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming, an important ancestral story passed down to her by her late mother, Gracie Morton Pwerle. Through this work, Roseanne continues a cultural and artistic tradition that has been carried through generations of women in her family.

The Dreaming tells of an Old Woman Mountain Devil Lizard who travelled across the vast Atnangker Country during the ancestral creation period. As she moved through the landscape, she shaped the land, established sacred places and left behind pathways that remain embedded in Country. Her journey connects important sites and holds knowledge relating to ceremony, identity and the continuing relationship between people and the land.

Roseanne represents these travels through a network of sweeping, interwoven forms that move across the canvas like pathways through Country. The circular motif may be understood as an important place or gathering site, while the layered fields of fine dots create a sense of the textured earth, vegetation and shifting surface of the landscape. Areas of white and warm ochre appear to trace the Mountain Devil Lizard’s movement, giving the composition a strong feeling of rhythm and continuous travel.

The Mountain Devil Lizard is not only an ancestral being from the Dreaming. It remains a living presence on Country, still moving through the landscape and carrying the story into the present. By painting this Dreaming, Roseanne honours the knowledge entrusted to her by Gracie and ensures that her mother’s cultural legacy continues through a new generation.