Audrey Brumby | In Her Own Words
Audrey Brumby is a Pitjantjatjara painter from Pukatja (Ernabella) in the APY Lands of South Australia. Born in 1967, she has been painting since her early teens and now lives in Adelaide, where she continues to paint and work as a government interpreter for her community. We sat down with Audrey at our Adelaide gallery to talk about her art, her stories and what painting means to her.
On learning to paint
Audrey learned to paint at the Ernabella Art Centre - going after school, the art centre a constant presence in her early life at Pukatja. It was there in the 1980s that she also learned batik, as part of a cultural exchange that brought new techniques into the community.
She no longer works in batik. These days it is acrylic on canvas - and she is settled in that choice. But the years at Ernabella, learning alongside her mother and community, gave her a foundation that is still visible in everything she paints.
You can read more about the Ernabella community and APY Lands art on our What is Aboriginal Art page.
On the stories she paints
Ask Audrey what she loves to paint and her answer is immediate - places, travelling, and waters.
These are not abstract concepts. They are the lived geography of her country - Pukatja (Ernabella) and the communities and homelands that surround it. The waterholes and soakages that have sustained her people across generations. When Audrey paints a place, she is painting knowledge - where to go, what is there, what it means.
Her use of colour starts with earth - the ochres and browns and reds of APY Lands country. But Audrey's palette doesn't stop there. She loves every colour of the rainbow, and her canvases often move from deep earthy tones into vivid, saturated colour that reflects the full breadth of country and sky.
"Colours. Sometimes colours like this. Rainbows."
You can read more about the Dreaming traditions of the APY Lands on our What is the Dreaming page.
On commissions
Of everything she has painted, Audrey speaks most warmly about commissions - works made on behalf of someone else, telling their story through her hand.
"Someone wants their story. That's why I drew."
There is something fitting about this for an artist who has spent years working as a government interpreter - carrying other people's words, making them understood across languages and cultures. In painting as in interpreting, Audrey's gift is translation. Taking what someone needs to say and giving it form.
Her most recognised commission is a work created for BreastScreen SA in 2017, telling the story of breast cancer screening for First Nations women. The painting - displayed across South Australia - uses traditional dot work and ceremonial motifs to describe a journey through screening, the gathering of women, the paths between them.
On country and Adelaide
Audrey lives in Adelaide now, with her daughter. But she travels back to the APY Lands - for sorry business, for family, for the connections that keep her rooted in the country she paints.
The distance between Adelaide and Pukatja has not thinned what she carries. It is present in every canvas.
On family and Ernabella
The Brumby family are one of the original families of Ernabella. Audrey's father Rodney recalls seeing Europeans for the first time during the early years of the settlement - a reminder of how recently that world changed, and how much living memory still holds.
That history is part of what Audrey paints. Places, travelling, waters. Country as it has always been known - before and after.
About Audrey Brumby
Audrey Brumby is a Pitjantjatjara painter born in 1967 at Pukatja (Ernabella) in the APY Lands of South Australia. She learned to paint at the Ernabella Art Centre and has been painting for over forty years. She paints places, travelling and waters - the lived geography of her country - in a bold, colourful style that moves from deep earthy tones to every colour of the rainbow. Her work has been commissioned by BreastScreen SA and exhibited at Tandanya. She lives in Adelaide and works as a government interpreter for Pitjantjatjara-speaking communities.
Art by Farquhar is a member of the Australian Aboriginal Art Association. Every painting comes with a Certificate of Authenticity and full provenance documentation.