Abie Loy Kemarre is an Eastern Anmatyerre speaker from Mosquito Bore country, Utopia, Northern Territory. Loy comes from a family of artists: including her grandmother, who was the well-known artist Kathleen Petyarre and her mother Margaret Loy Pula who was a finalist in the AGNSW Wynne Prize in 2012. Her aunt is the internationally renowned artist, Gloria Petyarre.
The eldest of five children, Abie was born in 1972 in Utopia north east of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Showing an interest in art at an early age she began painting at 19, mentored by her grandmother Kathleen Petyarre, over the years, Abie further developed her skills as an artist, experimenting with colour and design to create works that are in very high demand. Abie's work may consist of the Bush Hen Dreaming, inherited from her Grandfather. These paintings represent the bush hen travelling in search of bush seeds scattered across the country. Abie also paints Bush Medicine Leaf Dreaming, Emu Dreaming, Sandhills and Body Paint Designs including Awelye.
Her subjects include her Dreaming ancestor, the female Bush Turkey, as it walks about, eating and sometimes flying through her ancestral Country, and the special leaf. This special leaf grows in Abie's grandfather's country and is known for its wonderful curative properties. As a Dreaming, this special leaf is closely associated with women, and is as Christine Nicholls describes, "a shape-shifter, a state-changer, possessing the ability to transform herself from her bush leaf-form into a woman and back into a leaf again. The aspect of the Bush Leaf Dreaming that Abie paints belongs to women only. The accompanying Dreaming narrative contains a good deal of information about the precise locations of this leaf, in arid parts of the country. The bush leaf is painfully shy. When people touch the leaves or pick this leaf she dies of embarrassment, because of the shame of being touched. Yet magically, although the leaf withers under the gaze and touch of people who covet the leaves of this plant, she has the capacity to regenerate herself and brings herself back to life after".
Abie spends her time between Mosquito Bore with her family and Alice Springs.
Abie Loy's artworks are held in major collections worldwide and have been exhibited widely in galleries in Australia and overseas.
