Penny K Lyons Paintings

Penny K Lyons is a senior Walmajarri woman who was born c1940 at Wanywurtu, under a tutujarti tree (desert walnut tree), in the Great Sandy Desert. She grew up in that place with her family, one father, two mothers, one brother and two sisters. There is a rockhole with spring water at Wanywurtu and Penny K Lyons remembers hunting for goanna and feral cat at this place.

In the early 1950s Penny K Lyons’s family joined other Aboriginal groups who had migrated north towards the cattle station country along the edge of the desert in the Fitzroy Valley. When they left the desert Penny was a girl in her early teens. During the difficult journey she lost her mother’s sister, then her father and mother.

Penny K Lyons says of her journey out of the desert: “Our group was the last to come out of the bush. Promised husband been bring ‘em out of desert. Camp at bore, Victory Bore. Live at Christmas Creek. Policeman collect ‘em from Juliet River, bring ‘em into Christmas Creek. Station wife, Mrs Laidlaw, give ‘em clothes. Came in from desert, no clothes. Stay here since then. Husband work at station.”

Penny K Lyons lives at Wangkatjungka Community, adjacent to Christmas Creek station. She began painting in the mid 1990s, and her paintings depict the traditional waterholes and hunting grounds of her ancestral country in the Great Sandy Desert.

Aboriginal Art Status

Established artist.

Selected Exhibitions

2004 Wangkatjungka Women, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2004 Jila & Tali – Waterholes and Sandhills, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT
2004 Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Fire-Works Gallery, Brisbane, Walkabout Gallery, Sydney NSW
2004 Artists of Wangkatjungka – Stories of Country, Raintree Gallery, Darwin, NT
2005 Artists of Wangkatjungka, Hogarth Gallery, Sydney NSW
2005 Yirmpurr (Living Water) Recent Paintings from Wangkatjungka, Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra ACT
2005 Wangkatjungka, Ladner and Fell Gallery, Melbourne VIC
2006 Wangkatjungka- Artists of the Great Sandy Desert, ART MOB, Hobart
2006 Wangkatjungka Group Exhibition, Helen Maxwell ACT
2007 Wangkatjungka Mapping Country, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2007 Desert Mosaic, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2008 Wangkatjungka Artists: Canning Stock Route, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2009 Desert Rains – Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2010 Wangkatjungka Artists, Japingka Gallery, Fremantle WA
2010 Wangkatjungka Artists, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne VIC