Josie Petrick Kemarre is an Arrernte and Anmatyerre woman from Utopia, the Aboriginal-owned former cattle station north-east of Alice Springs. She has painted since she was a teenager, and since the late 1980s has become one of Utopia’s leading artists.

Some of her stories come from the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye, whom she calls grandmother, and who, late in life, became famous for painting the desert and its plants as they change with the seasons and the life-giving rains. Josie married Robin Petyarre, brother of the artist Gloria Petyarre, and her family includes the artists Abie Loy Kemarre and Bernadine Kemarre Johnson.

Josie is a bold and innovative artist who has taken the dot style to new heights, with aerial views of her desert birthplace and the surrounding traditional Country.

Her main Dreamings are native plants and bush tucker at their different stages of growth – most famously the bush plum, its ripening fruit shown in dots of red, blue and orange – together with designs from Awelye (women’s ceremony) and other Women’s Dreamings, built up in rows of brilliant dots.