Carolanne Ken b. 1971

Carolanne Ken was born in 1971 and lives in Kaltjiti in the vast Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands of Central Australia. Carolanne went to school in Kaltjiti as a young girl, and later went to Ingle Farm High School in Adelaide, where she graduated in 1986. Carolanne commenced painting in 2004 at Kaltjiti Arts where she had previously assisted in studio management before devoting herself to painting full time. Carolanne has one son, Clive, and one granddaughter.

Carolanne paints Minyma Malilu, a "big story" from the APY Lands which was passed down to her through her maternal grandmother. Malilu was an ancestral woman who was travelling the country, trying to find one of her daughters who had run away with the ‘wrong man’. When she found them she dug out a cave with her piti (coolamon) to create a big wiltja (shelter). The large roundels represent Malilu's cave and the paths that she, and other women of the community, would walk to access it. This is Carolanne’s grandmother’s country, and this story has deep spiritual and cultural significance to Carolanne. She maps out her canvases with painterly brush work, and refines the forms of roundels and emanating arcs with a fine dotting technique. 

Carolanne is a highly regarded and well-collected artist who has participated in numerous exhibitions; in 2019, her work was projected onto the Sydney Opera House as part of Badu Gili (meaning ‘water light’ in the language of the traditional owners of Bennelong Point, the Gadigal people).