Shirley Purdie (born 1947) is a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist, notable for winning the 2007 Blake Prize for Religious Art. She is a painter at

Warmun Community Warmun Community (also known as Turkey Creek) and Warmun are a township and locality in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, located on the Great Northern Highway, northeast of Perth, Western Australia. The closest populated town is Ha ...

, in Western Australia's

Kimberley Kimberly or Kimberley may refer to: Places and historical events Australia * Kimberley (Western Australia) ** Roman Catholic Diocese of Kimberley * Kimberley Warm Springs, Tasmania * Kimberley, Tasmania a small town * County of Kimberley, a ...

region.

Life

Purdie was born in 1947 at Gilbun, or

Mabel Downs Springvale or Springvale Station is a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. The Springvale Aggregation was created when Springvale was purchased along with Alice Downs, Mabel Down ...

Station, in Western Australia's

region, daughter of Madigan Thomas. She moved to Warmun, not far from her birthplace, where she lives and paints. She is married to artist

Gordon Barney Gordon may refer to: People * Gordon (given name), a masculine given name, including list of persons and fictional characters * Gordon (surname), the surname * Gordon (slave), escaped to a Union Army camp during the U.S. Civil War * Clan Gordo ...

. Her Ngarrangarni ( totem is a crow, and skin is Nangari.

Art

Purdie was taught by her mother and by major Kimberley Indigenous artist Queenie McKenzie, two women who were among the first to paint at Warmun in the early 1980s. Her work ''Stations of the Cross'' was washed off the walls of the Warmun Art Centre in the catastrophic floods of March 2007, and when later recovered from beside the creek it was found to have been seriously damaged. The work portrays the Christian

iconography Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...

of the 14

Stations of the Cross The Stations of the Cross or the Way of the Cross, also known as the Way of Sorrows or the Via Crucis, refers to a series of images depicting Jesus Christ on the day of Crucifixion of Jesus, his crucifixion and accompanying prayers. The station ...

, but also the history of conflict and racial violence in the artist's community in the 1920s and 1930s.

Awards

Purdie has won several awards, including the Blake Prize for Religious Art in 2007, for her work ''Stations of the Cross''.

Collections

Purdie's works are held by major galleries, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, National Gallery of Australia, which has her 1996

lithograph Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

, ''Giwiwan – Bow River Country''. This print shows the influence of the painting style of major artist Rover Thomas.

Books

* ''Shirley Purdie: My Story, Ngaginybe Jarragbe,'' Magabala, 2020 – shortlisted for the Premier's Prize for an Emerging Writer at the 2020 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards and for the 2021

Children's Book of the Year Award for New Illustrator The CBCA Award for New Illustrator (previously Crichton Award for Children's Book Illustration) is one of several awards presented annually by the Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA). The award was originally set up from a legacy made to t ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Purdie, Shirley 1947 births Living people Australian Aboriginal artists People from Warmun Community Artists from Western Australia Blake Prize for Religious Art winners