Janet Goldner Kngwarreye
Janet Golder Kngwarreye is an Anmatyerre artist from Mulga Bore in the Utopia Homelands of Central Australia. She is the daughter of Margaret Golder and Sammy Pitjara and lives at Boundary Bore with her husband, Ronnie Bird, and their three children. Janet is part of a distinguished artistic lineage that has shaped the internationally recognised Utopia art movement.
Her grandmothers, Polly Ngale and Angelina Pwerle, are highly respected Utopia artists, and her uncle, Greeny Purvis, is also an established painter. Janet’s sister, Belinda Golder Kngwarreye, continues this strong family tradition. Janet began painting in 1987, learning through close family connections and developing her practice alongside the women of her community.
Deeply connected to her ancestral land, Janet paints stories passed down through generations. Her work often explores Awelye (Women’s Ceremonial Body Paint), Bush Yam and Bush Plum, Bush Medicine, and Mountain Devil Dreaming. In recent years, she has focused on women’s cultural practices on Country—depicting ceremonial journeys, bush foods, and the living landscape of Utopia. Her confident use of colour ranges from striking black-and-white compositions to richly layered, vibrant palettes that reflect the vitality of her homeland. Janet’s work has been exhibited widely across Australia and internationally.
This painting is grounded in traditional knowledge and expressed through Janet’s assured, rhythmic dotting technique. Layers of carefully placed dots create a dense, textured surface, drawing the viewer into the movement and energy of the composition. The imagery is informed by close observation, memory, and lived experience, blending personal history with ancestral narratives.
The work depicts the Bush Plum Dreaming, an important Creation story shared across the western and central deserts, including Warlpiri Country and the Utopia Homelands. In this Dreaming, ancestral winds travelled across the land, carrying bush plum seeds from all directions. The first bush plum grew on ancestral Country, bore fruit, and released more seeds, which were dispersed across the landscape by the winds—ensuring abundance and continuity.
Within Aboriginal culture, the Bush Plum is honoured through ceremony, song, and dance to ensure its ongoing fruiting and regeneration. In Janet’s painting, the repeating patterns operate on multiple levels: they represent the fruit, leaves, flowers, and seeds of the bush plum, as well as ceremonial body paint designs worn during women’s ceremonies. The work speaks to themes of renewal, nourishment, women’s knowledge, and the deep spiritual relationship between people and Country.
2020 – Janet Golder Kngwarreye’s work was selected to feature in the Coles Supermarket installation, Alice Springs.
This artwork offers collectors an authentic and culturally rich example of contemporary Utopia painting—strong in story, lineage, and visual impact, and deeply connected to women’s ceremonial knowledge and the living desert landscape.
