Shirley Purdie (b. 1947) is a senior Gija artist at the Warmun Art Centre who has been painting for more than twenty years. Purdie has lived on her Country, Western Australia's East Kimberley, all her life. Inspired by senior Warmun artists, including her late mother, Madigan Thomas, as well as Rover Thomas and Queenie McKenzie, Purdie began to paint her Country in the early 1990s. A prominent leader in the Warmun community, her cultural knowledge and artistic skill allow her to pass on Gija stories and language to the younger generations. Characterised by a bold use of richly textured ochres, Purdie's body of work explores sites and narratives associated with the Country of her mother and father. Much of her work explores spirituality and the relationship between Gija conceptions of Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) and Catholicism. In 2007 Purdie was awarded the Blake Prize for Religious Art for her major work Stations of the Cross. Colonial histories of the region also figure in Purdie's work, in which she relates accounts of early contact, massacre, warfare and indentured labour since the incursion of pastoralists into Gija land in the late 1800s. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and is held in major national collections. In 2018, Purdie was selected to contribute to the National Portrait Gallery's twentieth anniversary exhibition, So Fine: Contemporary Women Artists make Australian History.
The National Portrait Gallery is temporarily closed to the public until further notice.
