Angelina Pwerle

Submitted by Picture Window

Part of the Australian Indigenous cohort known as the Desert Painters, Angelina Pwerle is a true “cult” artist, commanding a loyal following and enjoying strong institutional support while remaining just out of mainstream view. Her shimmering, pointillist “Bush Plum” compositions contain tens of thousands of individually applied dots that collectively resemble complex patterns found in nature, the atmosphere, and the cosmos. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Australia, and Japan’s National Museum of Art all hold her work, and “Bush Plums” have popped up everywhere from Art Basel in Miami Beach (courtesy of Salon 94) to comedian Steve Martin’s Twitter feed. Pwerle was born in the 1940s in the remote Utopia desert region and—in conjunction with Emily Kame Kngwarreye and other Utopia women—took up painting on canvas in 1988, ushering in Aboriginal art’s contemporary era.