Three Dogs Anguburra, 2000

natural earth pigments on canvas

65.5 x 72 cm

Est. $12,000 – $18,000

Hammer $12,000

Provenance: Commissioned by Neil McLeod Fine Arts Studio, Vic, Cat No. NM4802, painted at Mowanjum, WA, 2000 Private Collection, Vic First Nations Fine Art Auction, Art Leven (formerly Cooee Art), Sydney, NSW, 11 October 2022, Lot 19 Private Collection, Vic Accompanied by certificates of authenticity from Neil McLeod Fine Arts Studio and Cooee Art Gallery, and a photograph of the artist with the work
Artwork story: Anguburra is the Wororra name for the native honey bee, the maker of the most prized honey in Kimberley country. It was the name Patsy Lulpunda carried through a life that stretched across more than a century, from a time before European contact with Wororra culture to the turn of the millennium. She spent her final decade on the Prince Regent River near Mowanjum, making hair belts, stone axes and other objects of material culture. She did not begin painting until she was one hundred years old. Her first works were made in 1998 during a workshop at the home of Jack Dale, the great Kimberley custodian and storyteller, and she returned to paint with him on several further occasions before her death in 2000 at the age of approximately one hundred and two. This canvas, commissioned on a field trip to the Kimberley alongside works from Jack and Biddy Dale and Derek and Ashley Oobagooma, was among her final paintings. Three dogs occupy the deep black ground, each rendered in a different pigment — white, dusky pink, warm yellow — but sharing the same open-legged posture, as if caught in the same moment of stillness. The repetition is not sameness. Each body is distinct, each painted with an immediacy that belongs entirely to a hand unburdened by convention. Against the dark field they float, vivid and unhurried, as if the ground beneath them has no weight.

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Sale 3 · Lot 4

Patsy Anguburra Lulpunda

c.1898 – 2000

Region: Kimberley
Community: Mowanjum
Language group: Worrorra (Worora)

Three Dogs Anguburra, 2000

natural earth pigments on canvas

65.5 x 72 cm

Est. $12,000 – $18,000

Hammer $12,000

Provenance: Commissioned by Neil McLeod Fine Arts Studio, Vic, Cat No. NM4802, painted at Mowanjum, WA, 2000 Private Collection, Vic First Nations Fine Art Auction, Art Leven (formerly Cooee Art), Sydney, NSW, 11 October 2022, Lot 19 Private Collection, Vic Accompanied by certificates of authenticity from Neil McLeod Fine Arts Studio and Cooee Art Gallery, and a photograph of the artist with the work
Artwork story: Anguburra is the Wororra name for the native honey bee, the maker of the most prized honey in Kimberley country. It was the name Patsy Lulpunda carried through a life that stretched across more than a century, from a time before European contact with Wororra culture to the turn of the millennium. She spent her final decade on the Prince Regent River near Mowanjum, making hair belts, stone axes and other objects of material culture. She did not begin painting until she was one hundred years old. Her first works were made in 1998 during a workshop at the home of Jack Dale, the great Kimberley custodian and storyteller, and she returned to paint with him on several further occasions before her death in 2000 at the age of approximately one hundred and two. This canvas, commissioned on a field trip to the Kimberley alongside works from Jack and Biddy Dale and Derek and Ashley Oobagooma, was among her final paintings. Three dogs occupy the deep black ground, each rendered in a different pigment — white, dusky pink, warm yellow — but sharing the same open-legged posture, as if caught in the same moment of stillness. The repetition is not sameness. Each body is distinct, each painted with an immediacy that belongs entirely to a hand unburdened by convention. Against the dark field they float, vivid and unhurried, as if the ground beneath them has no weight.