Patsy Ross b. 1975

Patsy Ross was born in 1975 and grew up in the remote community of Willowra, nestled in the rugged Tanami Desert some 340km north-west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). She went on to study at Yirara College in Mparntwe. Patsy is a proud Warlpiri woman, and is diligently teaching her culture and stories to her two daughters, Raziya and Mashona. Patsy is sister-in-law to acclaimed artist, Janet Long Nakamarra.

Patsy paints various aspects of women’s business, from collecting bush seeds and other tucker like wild blackberries, harvesting bush medicine, and Yawulyu - aspects of ceremony, such as women's traditional body paint designs. Yawulyu is a foundational pillar of culture and spiritual knowledge that encompasses a vast intersecting network of place, story, song, dance, and ritual performance. Patsy often includes traditional symbols and iconography; like the u-shape to depict the women and straight lines to depict their wana (digging sticks), variations of circles and roundels to depict sites of significance, like waterholes or soakages, or collection places for tucker or medicinal plants. Patsy also depicts a Rain Dreaming story, a significant Warlpiri story about the rains that move across the land, and the wetter seasons that bring new life to the desert country.

Patsy was taught to paint by her mother, who she said was "the happiest person in the world". Patsy has an innate sense of colour, and uses this intuition to bring her ancestral culture and Country to life on her canvases. Patsy and her family still go out collecting bush tucker when they go back to country. It is this - her country and the abundance it offers to her family and community - that Patsy chooses to depict in her meticulous and precisely painted works.