Australian Art Collective – Art for Everyone | Australian Aboriginal Art Gallery

Kathleen Petyarre

Acrylic on Canvas | Unstretched

100 x 100 cm | C25188

2003

$9900 AUD

Mountain Devil Dreaming

In Mountain Devil Dreaming, the late Kathleen Petyarre maps the ancestral journey of the Arnwekety (Mountain Devil Lizard)—her personal Dreaming—across her Country in Eastern Utopia, Central Australia. Through a near-meditative field of intricate dotting and delicate, radiating lines, she evokes the movement, memory, and spiritual resonance of this significant ancestor as it travelled across sandhills, waterholes, and ceremonial sites.

This work is a masterpiece of subtle power. Its intersecting patterns represent not only topographical features but also the spiritual imprint left behind by the Mountain Devil. The fine tonal gradation and restrained colour palette speak to Kathleen’s deep knowledge of Country and her commitment to a visual language that is both ancient and contemporary.

Kathleen Petyarre is widely recognised as one of the most important figures in Australian contemporary art. Her works are held in major collections around the world and are celebrated for their quiet intensity, precision, and spiritual depth. Mountain Devil Dreaming is a profound expression of Country, story, and custodianship—layered in culture and radiating with ancestral presence.