Pantjiti Mary McLean

Pantjiti Mary McLean (c. 1930, Kaltukatjara, Western Australia) is a Ngaatjajarra Aboriginal Australian artist.
Life.
Pantjiti Mary McLean was born circa 1930 in Kaltukatjara, Docker River, Western Australia. She met her husband Mr. Bates at Blackstone. In the 1950s she left the Western Desert walking with her husband and son to the Warburton Ranges, and then to Cosmo Newbury in the Eastern Goldfields. According to government policy of that time local Aboriginal children were to be raised and schooled by the missionaries at Mount Margaret Mission where McLean’s son went too. When McLean’s daughter was born, she was also taken away from her. While children were at the mission McLean was directed to work on the district sheep station where she chose to be a station hand mustering the sheep.
In the 1970s McLean moved to the Kalgoorlie Native Reserve, and then in the 1980s to the Ninga Mia Community in the Kalgoorlie, where she lived until 2008. Then she moved to Kunkurangkalpa Aged Care.
Art.
During the 1980s McLean produced craftworks and traditional paintings. In 1992 she participated in the Warta Kutju (Wama Wanti) Street Art Project, where she met fibre artist Nalda Searles. Starting from 1992 McLean’s paintings have been exhibited widely.
In 1993, she created her famous painting "Hunting grounds" depicting the ripe quandong fruit, the ripples on the surface of the waterholes, the scampering of the goanna and the laughter and song of her people. The same year a sell-out exhibition of her work in Fremantle launched her career. Throughout the 1990s she worked with artist Nalda Searles as part of the Healthway Fringe Camp Project and developed her distinctive painterly style. In 1995, McLean received a prestigious Telstra Indigenous Award.
In 2001, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the Curtin University of Technology in Perth. In 2005 a book with a catalogue for a retrospective exhibition "Pantjiti Mary McLean: A Big Story: Paintings and Drawings" 1992–2005 was published in Adelaide. McLean’s paintings are represented in all major public and many private collections around Australia.