Lindy Nungarrayi Brodie

“When I go out bush, to hunt and visit Country I always look for the bush flowers. I collect these and bring them home, so I can have some of the outside, inside, in the kitchen or the lounge room”.

The life of Lindy Nungarrayi Brodie is closely linked to the Barkly region. Her work speaks to her deep knowledge of the land and its history, often referring to the development of the region, be it depictions of her grandparents living on Country and seeing whitefellas for the first time in the 1930s, the ANZACs establishing encampments along the Stuart Highway in the 1940s, planes above the flooded expanse of the Barkly tablelands or the Ghan travelling between Tennant Creek and Alice Springs. 

With her signature use of cadmium orange, reflecting the colour of the earth, Lindy builds texture with layers and layers of paint, slowly adding details to reflect the unique features of the land around the Barkly; spinifex, ant pits and eucalypti with bright white trunks are scatter throughout her paintings, which bare strong resemblance to the landscape, despite the degree of abstraction which Lindy injects into her work. Human intervention constantly makes itself known with the presence of trains, planes, cars and people.

More recently, Lindy’s love of bush flowers and her interest in art history inspired her to incorporate studies of bush flowers into domestic scenes in what she dubs Flower Paintings. With her Flower Paintings Lindy portrays elements of the desert landscape within her home. Lindy’s process involves painting compositions of bush flowers in vases or mugs among the trappings of daily life.

Lindy is a Waramungu woman from Alroy Downs. Lindy began her career in Alice Springs at Jukurrpa Arts before moving to Tennant Creek to join Julalikari Arts in 2003. Finally, she joined Barkly Regional Arts in 2012, becoming a founding member of the Tartukula Artists.