Queenie McKenzie was one of Australia’s notable female Indigenous artists and is included in many major exhibitions and collections including the National Gallery of Australia.
When Queenie was a child, her mother would rub charcoal into her face in an attempt to darken her features, so the authorities wouldn’t take her away.
Nicknamed Garagarag or Blondie because of her light skin and fair hair, Queenie was born in 1916 at Old Texas Downs on the banks of the Ord River in the remote and rugged East Kimberley in Western Australia. The daughter of a Malngin/Gurindji woman and a white horse breaker, she only escaped the Australian government’s assimilation policies of the time because of her mother’s desperate efforts to conceal her background.
Queenie only started painting when she was in her seventies and was the first woman in her community to do so. Until her death in 1998, she examined everything from the creation of the world through to the violence of the colonial era and her paintings reveal an intimate knowledge of the country, explored through landscapes and dreaming.