Elizabeth Kunoth Kngwarreye b. 1961

Elizabeth Kunoth Kngwarreye is a significant senior artist from the expansive Indigenous homelands region of Utopia. She primarily lives at Iylentye (Mosquito Bore), approximately 250 km north-east of Mparntwe (Alice Springs) in the Northern Territory. Elizabeth is one of the custodians of her country, Atnangkere, along with her late husband Cowboy Louis Pwerle, who was a significant artist and senior law man. Elizabeth’s family lineage is one of artistic prestige. Elizabeth is the daughter of the late artist Nancy Petyarre, one of the seven Petyarre sisters, several of whom are Australia’s most significant and celebrated artists - key figures in the early Utopian art movement. Through the complex Aboriginal kinship system, Elizabeth is also the granddaughter of one of the most revered Utopian artists, Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

From her enviable artistic pedigree, Elizabeth has undoubtedly inherited innate painting skills, with few artists painting with her level of refinement. Through thousands of tiny rhythmic strokes, Elizabeth depicts the movement of the pencil yam seeds (kame) as they are thrown into the wind to be reharvested. Elizabeth paints some of the yam seeds larger than others indicating a plumpness if there has been rain. She also employs colour to depict the yam seeds and leaves that have dried out and those that are still supple. In some of Elizabeth’s more recent paintings, she has incorporated a topography of her country amongst the yam seeds, showing the water coursing through after large rains give vitality to the pencil yam. 

Elizabeth shares the ‘one country’ with the late, great Emily who also painted the yam. Emily’s name, “Kame”, translates to yam seed. Elizabeth remembers returning from school to find Emily singing songs about this prized food. The yam itself is a small, skinny potato-like vegetable and is cooked on an open fire. The yam holds both a nutritional value as well as a spiritual significance. 

Elizabeth was a finalist in the 2013 Blake Prize, a finalist in the Art Gallery of New South Wales Wynne prize for landscape painting in 2008, 2010 and 2025, and in 2008 she won the coveted Churchie Award.