What is Bush Medicine Leaves? | Aboriginal Art Explained
Bush Medicine Leaves is a well-known subject in Aboriginal painting from the Utopia homelands of Central Australia. It celebrates a plant valued for its healing properties and the knowledge of the women who gather and prepare it.
The Story
The paintings depict the leaves of a native shrub that grows in the desert country of Utopia, north-east of Alice Springs. Women collect the leaves and use them in traditional bush medicine, knowledge that is held by senior women and passed down through the generations.
The leaves are prepared in different ways depending on the ailment. Ground with a stone and mixed with water, they are used for coughs, colds and flu-like symptoms. Boiled down and mixed with animal fat such as kangaroo fat, they make an ointment for cuts, wounds, bites and rashes that keeps for months.
The Paintings
Most Bush Medicine Leaves paintings are built from thousands of fine, layered brushstrokes, each one a single leaf. The density of the strokes gives the surface a sense of movement, as though the leaves are being lifted and carried across country. Colour palettes vary widely from artist to artist, and the same story can be painted in quiet earth tones or bold, high-contrast colour.
Gloria Petyarre is widely credited with developing this style. Her painting Leaves won the 1999 Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Bush Medicine Leaves Artists at Art by Farquhar
Artists painting Bush Medicine Leaves at Art by Farquhar include Gloria Petyarre, Jeannie Petyarre, Esther Haywood Petyarre, Roseanne Morton Petyarre, Bernadine Johnson Kemarre, Margaret Scobie and Janet Golder Kngwarreye, an Anmatyerre painter from Alhalkere (Boundary Bore) in Utopia.
To learn more about the cultural context of these works, read our guides to the Dreaming and how to buy authentic Aboriginal art.
Browse Bush Medicine Leaves paintings from all of our artists in one place.
Art by Farquhar is a member of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia.