Lizzie Moss Pwerle is an Alyawarre woman from Atnwengerrp, a traditional country area in the Utopia region of Central Australia, approx. 300kms north east of Alice Springs. Lizzie began her artistic career using non-traditional materials in the late seventies and early eighties with the batik program that was initially introduced by the first art and craft coordinators Jenny Green and later Julia Murray. Lizzie was involved in the ‘Utopia: A Picture Story’ exhibition, a collection of 88 silk batiks that is now part of the Holmes ‘a Court Collection. From there, it was a natural progression from batik to applying paint to canvas. In her paintings Lizzie uses a series of intricate dots to portray the movement of Awelye – womens ceremony. The linear work indicates the lines that the women make in the red sand when they dance their stories that belong to Atnwengerrp country.
Lizzie is a first cousin to the famous artist, the late Minnie Pwerle. She lives with her
aunties Katie and Janie Morgan Petyarre and a very large extended family at
Atnwengerrp.Exhibitions in which her work has appeared include “Utopia – a Picture Story”, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide, SA. 1989; “Utopia – a Picture Story”, an exhibition of 88 works on silk from the Holmes a Court Collection by Utopia artists which toured Eire and Scotland, 1990; “Standing on Ceremony”, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide, SA, 2007.
