Bessie Liddle, Travelling Family, Acrylic on Paper, 56x76cm, WOP25

This lyrical painting by Bessie Liddle depicts a family group travelling from one campsite to another across a life-giving landscape. A flowing river runs through the composition, accompanied by six concentric circles marking important water sources along the journey. Rich, saturated colours and dense patterning evoke abundance—trees and flowering bushes fill the land with a sense of fertility and movement. Anchoring each side of the painting are large trees resembling boabs, suggesting a westward passage: a transition from the red sands of the Central Desert toward Western Australia and the cool blue horizon of the sea.

Bessie Liddle was born at Middleton Ponds Station near Tempe Downs, southwest of Alice Springs, to a Pertame father and a Luritja mother. Raised on cattle stations, she learned traditional hunting, gathering, and cultural knowledge while also spending time at Hermannsburg Mission, where she was introduced to drawing, language, and music. Over her lifetime she worked as a stock hand, camp cook, artefact maker, and cultural educator, sharing deep knowledge of Country and law with both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

In 1986, Liddle co-founded Jukurrpa Artists Inc. in Alice Springs, a pioneering women’s art cooperative that continues to support hundreds of Central Australian women artists. Exhibiting regularly since the late 1980s, she is celebrated for translating ceremonial body designs and women’s Dreaming stories into confident, contemporary paintings of enduring cultural strength and authority.