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Most often explored in Doreen’s works are the motifs of her everyday modern Aboriginal community life; the animals hunted and plants gathered for bush tucker, the cars and aeroplanes used to travel to the cities and remote communities she regularly moves between, and depictions of the Country itself. 

Collectively this imagery, depicted with Doreen’s trademark wild palettes, painterly brushstrokes, and stark compositions, builds a layered representation of her Country. Doreen’s intimately known ngurra (home Country, camp) is viewed from multiple spatial perspectives, and in stylistic modes ranging from pure abstraction to images incorporating realist and traditional elements.

Doreen’s ngurra encompasses the Country between Western Desert communities and towns; Warralong, Strelley, Marble Bar, Port Hedland, and Jigalong, her birthplace. People identify with their ngurra in terms of specific rights and responsibilities, and the possession of intimate knowledge of the physical and cultural properties of one’s Country. Painting ngurra, and in so doing sharing the Jukurrpa (Dreaming) stories and physical characteristics of that place, has today become an important means of cultural maintenance.

Categories: Shire of East Pilbara (Martumili Artists)

Name: Doreen Chapman

Language: Manyjilyjarra

Biography:

Doreen Chapman was born at Jigalong Mission in the early 1970s, though she soon moved with her family to the newly Aboriginal-owned Strelley Station. In her youth, Doreen travelled extensively between remote Pilbara communities including Warralong, Punmu, and Marble Bar with her mother, senior Martumili Artist May Wokka Chapman. Today she primarily lives in Warralong community and paints between Spinifex Hill Studio and Martumili Artists.

Doreen is now an acclaimed artist in her own right, known for her loose, expressive painting style and distinct visual voice. A deaf woman, Doreen uses painting as a vital means of communication and self-expression. She began her artistic career with Martumili Artists in 2009, when she and other women from Punmu created a large collaborative painting to raise funds for the community.

Since then, her work has received widespread recognition. Doreen has been a finalist in major national art prizes, including the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (2024) and the Lester Prize (2016, 2019), and has won numerous regional awards such as the Cossack Art Award for Best Painting by an Indigenous Artist (2015, 2016, 2021). In 2024, she was the only artist invited to exhibit across all six venues of the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns. She has presented three solo exhibitions: Doreen Chapman – A New Perspective (2019, Turner Galleries, WA), Always on the Move (2020, Suzanne O’Connell Gallery, QLD), and Doreen Chapman (2016, FORM Gallery, WA).

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