Senior and award-winning Warmun artist Shirley Purdie has been painting for more than 25 years. Her cultural knowledge and artistic skill complement each other to produce a practice that holds great strength. She is also a prominent leader in Warmun community and an incisive cross-cultural communicator. Inspired by more senior Warmun artists including her late mother, the great Madigan Thomas, as well as Rover Thomas and Queenie McKenzie, Shirley began to paint her country in the early 1990s. Shirley’s uncle, artist Jack Britten, said to her, ‘Why don’t you try yourself for painting, you might be all right.' Shirley says: “It’s good to learn from old people. They keep saying when you paint you can remember that country, just like to take a photo, but there’s the Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) and everything. Good to put it in painting, your country, so kids can know and understand. When the old people die, young people can read the stories from the paintings. They can learn from the paintings and maybe they want to start painting too.’

Shirley’s body of work explores sites and narratives associated with the country of her mother and father and is characterized by a bold use of richly textured ochre.