“For her outstanding contribution to the visual arts, particularly her achievement as a powerful narrative landscape painter and for her teaching of art and language in the community.”

Queenie Mckenzie, one of Australia's leading visual artists, passed away in November 1998. As a pioneer of the booming Kimberley art movement her powerful narrative landscape paintings are highly sought after by galleries all over the world. A stalwart of the Warmun community, Queenie took an active part in ceremonial life, was a good singer and dancer and taught Gija language in the school. She also taught art and cultural classes to the young people of Warmun. She was a prolific artist and one of the most respected custodians of local custom and lore.

Queenie was born circa 1915 at Old Texas Downs Station located on the Ord River east of Turkey Creek (now Warmun). Her father was European and her mother Aboriginal. As a child Queenie's mother rubbed her with charcoal to prevent her being "taken away" by the government authorities. Queenie grew up among the Gija People and spoke Gija as her first language. It was her life-long friend Rover Thomas who first inspired her to take up painting in the early 1980s. For many years they both lived on Texas Downs cattle station where she worked as a cook and he as a stockman. In a typically resolute fashion, after watching Rover Thomas paint, Queenie believed she could do better. Queenie was an integral part of the artistic Warmun community which includes other now well known artists such as Hector Jandany, George Mung Mung, Jack Britten, Paddy Jaminji and Hector Chundaloo. She along with others, including the late Rover Thomas, created an international reputation for the art from the north-west of Australia. 

While Queenie never received any formal art training, she loved to paint and would use natural ochres that came from the land. around Warmun. She would mix the ochre with more modern binders in order to preserve the life of the painting. This process makes it technically difficult to make corrections and revisions. The colour schemes in Queenie's work are distinctive: browns, blacks, yellows and most importantly pink. Pink was Queenie's favourite colour and is evident in much of her work. She would gather the white and red ochres used to make the colour from secret spots in the bush. Her paintings are often calm, deliberate landscapes which have a beautifully restrained tonality. The style is fairly traditional with the use of dots and large areas of flat colour. Her works distinctively include both narrative accounts and iconographic depictions of the local lore and community life at Warmun. The inspiration for Queenie's painting often came to her in dreams.

Through her work, Queenie demonstrated her empathy for many of the issues that faced her community. Her painting Blackfella Massacre, for example, tells the story of an encounter between police and Aboriginal people in 1922. Queenie also produced a painting to explain the situation of Aboriginal people living with alcohol. The painting was displayed at Western Australia's "Living with Alcohol" summit in 1994.

Queenie has been described as the driving force behind the re-introduction of Women's Law in the Warmun community in the early 1980s. She was the central figure and principal source of information for a project approved by the Heritage Council of Western Australia to record and document mythological, historic and women's ceremonial sites in the Warmun area. Through her dedication to the project and generosity of spirit, the rich culture of the women in the eastern Kimberley has been preserved for future generations. There is no doubt that "her passionate enthusiasm and the fact she never lost touch with her Warmun roots won her wide respect."

In April 1994 Queenie, along with other Aboriginal women, exhibited their work in a show titled Bush Women at Fremantle Arts Centre. Queenie noted that one of the differences between men and women Aboriginal painters was that the women often sit down and get on with the job. The men on the other hand would often stop and walk away. As she moved around her painting, she would sing, talk and make jokes. Queenie's first solo show was titled "Gara-Garag: My Life Longa Texas" and was presented in association with Waringarri Aboriginal Arts at William Mora Galleries in 1995.

In 1998, she was among the eight artists chosen to create fine art prints as part of the Sydney Olympics commemoration of Australian culture. Her work is exhibited in the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the State Galleries of South Australia and Western Australia, the Berndt Museum of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia and numerous other galleries. Devoted to inspiring younger artists to paint and to keep their culture strong, Queenie was instrumental in establishing the first wholly community owned art centre for Gija artists in the Warmun community. The Warmun Art Centre was established in August 1998 to ensure the continued development of future generations of Warmun artists.

Queenie McKenzie was a generous woman with an infectious sense of humour who gave everything she had to the Warmun community. Queenie's inimitable and forthright style translated to her painting, and to her dedication to preserve the rich cultural life of the area. While Queenie is missed as an artist, educator and matriarchal figure, she has left a remarkable lega- cy that has enriched the lives of all Australians that choose to engage with her community, her land, her dances, her language and her paintings. "Queenie is undoubtedly a prodigious artist by any standard."

Reference; Senator The Hon. Richard Alston, from http://www.dcita.gov.au/cgi-bin/graphics.pl?path=3353. Zoltan Kovacs. "Artist inspired by the Echidna", The West Australian 22/12/94. Patricia Vinnicombe, Women's sites, paintings and places: Warrmarn Community, Turkey Creek: a project with Queenie McKenzie, funded by the National Estate Grants Programme, 1995-1996, p3.