Anna Tilmouth
Language Group: Anmatyerre
Country: Mulga Bore/Bushy Park, Utopia Region, North East of Alice Springs
Anna Tilmouth Napangardi was born in 1973 in Utopia, Central Desert Australia, northeast of Alice Springs.
Anna comes from a long line of artist royalty, being the daughter of June Bird and Johnny Tilmouth, the niece of one of Australia’s most prominent Aboriginal artists Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996) and the granddaughter of artist Ada Bird Petyarre (1930-2009), a significant member of the important group to develop the Utopian Art Movement.
Anna Tilmouth shows a strong confidence in her individual painting style, often experimenting with new designs and she has a great sense of colour. Anna says that the designs in her paintings are inspired by the Ngulunga plant. The Ngulunga has beautiful yellow flowers with thick bristles and is found near Anna’s homeland in the Utopia region.
Anna creates inspiring paintings with fascinating accuracy of intricate details and subtle shades of colour to attain an almost three-dimensional effect; images seem to float in the air and move with the viewer’s eyes. The colours used in Anna’s works perfectly complement each other as she uses a combination of earth tones set off with vibrant plums, pinks and yellows.
Anna, like many Utopian women, are able to showcase diversity in their dreaming. In Anna’s case, her Dreamtime stories include, Travelling Women, Women’s Ceremony, Bush Seeds and Body Paint, all of which are significant to the creation of and the connection to the land.
Anna’s works have been exhibited throughout Australia and the United States of America, but most notably, Anna’s work was selected for the prestigious National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art prize in 1998. Anna paintings are successfully sold at auctions and have been exhibited around the world and in many private collections around Australia and worldwide.
