Penny K Lyons

Penny K Lyons, a respected Walmajarri elder, was born around 1940 at Wanawurtu beneath the shade of a tjurtujarti, a desert peanut tree. Growing up at Wanawurtu with her family, which included one father, two mothers, one brother, and two sisters, Penny fondly recalls their home near a rockhole with springwater. She has vivid memories of embarking on walkabouts to hunt goanna and feral cats in the surrounding area.

Penny's family, along with other groups, migrated north to the cattle station lands encompassing the Fitzroy Valley. The journey, undertaken when Penny was in her early teens, was marked by tragedy as she lost her mother's sister, followed by the passing of both her father and mother. Overwhelmed by grief, the young Penny desired to return to the desert. However, her late brother, Peter Skipper, frustrated with her, left Penny and her younger sister at Milidjidee near a waterhole, continuing the journey toward Fitzroy.

Throughout her life, Penny resided on cattle stations along the Fitzroy Valley and eventually settled in the Wangkatjungka community. Her artistic journey began in 1994 when she started painting. Penny K Lyons' distinctive painting style features expansive fields of color, employing two or three-tone dotting techniques to depict the vast open spaces of the desert environment. In her artwork, she beautifully captures the essence of traditional waterholes and hunting grounds from her Walmajarri ancestral country, where her family lived until the early 1950s.