Untitled by Bessie Liddle, 56x76cm, Painting on Arches Paper WOP24
In this lively acrylic-on-paper work, Bessie Liddle presents a radiant countryside animated by colour, rhythm, and movement. A road in the foreground draws the viewer into the landscape, while rich vegetation pulses across the surface, giving the scene a sense of vitality and flow. Floating branches arc across the skyline, suggesting a prized tree species traditionally used for spear making and everyday utensils—an understated reference to practical cultural knowledge embedded in Country.
At the upper edge of the composition, U-shaped forms mark human presence at key sites, anchoring the landscape in lived experience. The painting carries an overall feeling of lightness and joy, heightened by strong complementary colours and dynamic, dancing shapes that seem to lift and circulate across the surface.
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. Throughout her life 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 renowned for translating ceremonial body designs and women’s Dreaming narratives into confident, contemporary paintings of enduring cultural strength and warmth.