Biography

Pitjantjatjara, b. 1966 Maureen Douglas is a Pitjantjatjara artist associated with Tjala Arts in Amata, South Australia. Born in Amoonguna in 1966, she grew up in Warburton, Western Australia, before later moving to Pipalyatjara and then Amata. Before painting, Maureen worked with batik. At Tjala Arts, she began painting her father’s Country and the Anumara Tjukurpa. Dreaming & Country: Anumara Tjukurpa Maureen’s primary subject is Anumara Tjukurpa, or Caterpillar Dreaming. The story is connected to her father’s Country and the broader cultural geography of the APY Lands. She also paints Ngayuku Ngura / My Country, and has worked collaboratively with family members, including the Burton Women’s Collaborative. Style and Technique Maureen’s paintings are built through dense fields of line, dotting and repeated movement. Her surfaces often have a strong pulse: tracks, ridges, movement lines and ancestral forms held in a closely worked painted field. The compositions can feel both mapped and bodily, with the Caterpillar story moving across the canvas through rhythm, pressure and repetition. Maureen’s Palette Maureen works with a broad APY palette, often using pinks, reds, oranges, whites, yellows, greens, blues and darker grounds. Her colour is typically layered and high-key, with contrast used to separate movement, site and story across the surface. For the Collector Maureen Douglas paints through Tjala Arts, one of the major APY art centres. She is also represented through APY Gallery and has been shown in Tjala Arts-related group exhibitions, including Tjala Queens at APY Gallery Adelaide. Her collaborative work with Wawiriya Burton and Angela Burton, Mingkiri Tjukurpa (Mice Dreaming), 2011, is held in the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art collection.