Alison remembers when she was young, her grandmother took her digging for tjala (honey ants) and the rain came in. She was watching the water coming down, how it made all the different colours on the tree, creating a beautiful rainbow in the tree. Now whenever there is rain in the afternoon around Ernabella and a rainbow comes, Alison thinks of that time as a child and she creates all of those colours again on the canvas.
Name: Alison Lionel
Language: Pitjantjatjara
Community: Ernabella (Pukatja)
Biography:
Alison is a member of Ernabella’s renowned Lionel family – her grandmother Pantjiti, her mother Yurpiya and her sister Rachael are all highly regarded and acclaimed artists.
Alison is a versatile painter and ceramic artist and mother of four. She first started coming to the art centre as a young girl, watching her mother and grandmother. In the last few years she has developed her own artistic style, focusing on elements of the natural environment that she observes when she’s out on country.
In 2017 Alison participated in an inter-generational collaborative painting project and was mentored by senior Ernabella artists Tjunkaya Tapaya OAM and Tjariya Stanley.
Alison has had two Kangkurura (Two Sisters) exhibitions with her sister Rachael in Sydney, and she has exhibited in galleries all around Australia and in Belgium. Her work is held in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
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Tjukula/Waterholes For the Pitjantjatjara people living in the desert, knowledge of their water sources was critical to their survival. This resulted in an intimate understanding of the landscape which continues today. Water is an essential Read more…
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