Ada Bird Petyarre was born around 1936 in the Utopia region, about 270 km north-east of Alice Springs in Central Australia. An Anmatyerre woman, her Country was Atnangkere, and she became one of the senior women at Utopia.

Ada was one of seven sisters, all talented artists: the well-known Gloria and Kathleen Petyarre, and Nancy, Violet, Myrtle and Jean Petyarre. The respected elder and artist Lindsay Bird Mpetyane was her brother-in-law.

A widow with six children, Ada saw two of her daughters, June and Hilda Bird, become artists too. Her son Paddy married the artist Eileen Bird Nungarai, and their daughter Alvira Bird Mpetyane carries the family’s painting forward. Ada passed away in June 2009 and is greatly missed by her family.

Like many Utopia women, Ada began as a batik artist, joining the Utopia Women’s Batik group in the late 1970s. Her work featured in Utopia: A Picture Story, the celebrated collection of 88 silk batiks, and her batik appears on the cover of the book of the same name.

She moved to acrylic on canvas in 1988, through the Summer Project that introduced painting to Utopia. Within a year the National Gallery of Australia had acquired one of her major canvases, and in 1990 she held her first solo exhibition at Utopia Art, Sydney.

Ada painted the Dreamings she shared with her sisters and with Emily Kame Kngwarreye, combining traditional designs with bold linear patterns that became her signature.