Colleen Lewis Kngwarreye spent much of her youth on cattle stations across the Northern Territory and Queensland, where her father worked as a stockman and her mother as a housemaid. Like thousands of Aboriginal families, they helped build Australia’s cattle industry, sharing their knowledge of the land and providing the labour the stations depended on.

Many of those workers were paid little or nothing beyond rations, which Colleen calls “tea and sugar”. She is part of the Stolen Wages class action brought on behalf of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who worked in the Northern Territory under Commonwealth wage controls between 1933 and 1971, which the Commonwealth has agreed to settle.

Today Colleen lives with her partner, Michael Price, at their outstation at Honeymoon Bore.

Colleen paints with Artists of Ampilatwatja, the Aboriginal-owned art centre in the Alyawarr community of Ampilatwatja. She is a prominent artist whose paintings are shown in Australia and overseas.

Ampilatwatja artists are known for painting the land itself rather than traditional symbols: thousands of dots of colour build up the lay of the Country, showing where bush medicine, bush tucker and water are found.