Born in 1948 and a Warlpiri speaker, Jeannie Egan is one of the younger women painters at Yuendumu who joined the group of senior women painting at Yuendumu in 1987. She rapidly emerged with a distinctive style of strong narrative elements, boldly outlined in basic earth colours. In September 1987, only a month after she first exhibited with Warlukurlangu Artists at the Reconnaissance Gallery in Melbourne, she won the National Aboriginal Art Award and the Rothman’s Foundation Award for the best artwork in introduced media. Since then, her work has been included in many exhibitions of Warlukurlangu Artists in capital cities around Australia. Her Dreamings are Wanakiji (Bush Plum), Yarumayi (White Ochre), Miinypa (Native Fuschia) and Parlukurlangu (Giant). Her 1987 painting of the Goanna Dreaming at the site of Yarumayi was included in Images of Religion in Australian Art in 1988-9 and in Mythscapes in September 1989, both at the National Gallery of Victoria. Her work is also reproduced in Contemporary Aboriginal Art: from the Robert Holmes à Court Collection, (ed. A. Brody (Heytesbury Holdings, Perth, 1990). She has completed a major trilogy setting out the entire Milky Way Dreaming narrative. She also worked on a 7 × 3 m canvas by 42 of Yuendumu’s artists commissioned by Prof. H. Antes of Berlin, which formed part of the 1993 touring exhibition Aratjara – Art of the First Australians. Collections: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Galleries & Museums of Northern Territory, Akademie Der Kunst, Berlin, Christensen Fund, Holmes à Court, Musée des Arts Africains et Oceaniens, Paris, many private collections in Australia and overseas
- Writers:
- Johnson, Vivien
- Date written:
- 1994
- Last updated:
- 2011
