Untitled, 04D010 2004

Kathleen Petyarre made this Untitled work with paint on canvas in the Desert. Just imagine the patience it must have taken to fill the canvas with these tiny dots of colour! It's like Petyarre was building the picture from the ground up, one tiny gesture at a time. The sunny yellow makes me think of the Australian outback - that intense heat and light. I wonder what Petyarre was thinking as she created this piece. The lines crisscrossing the canvas feel like pathways, maybe representing journeys through the landscape or even through life itself. It is like she's mapping the earth and her experiences, one dot at a time. I can see connections to other painters, like Agnes Martin, who used repetition and subtle variations to create meditative spaces. It feels like Petyarre's work is part of a larger conversation about mark-making, perception, and the power of simplicity. These artists are all investigating something essential about what it means to see and feel.