Big, bold, body paint in highly saturated tones are the trademark of Minnie Pwerle, an exquisitely talented Alyawarre woman born at the turn of the 20th century in the Utopia region of Aboriginal Australia. At a remote cattle station almost 200 miles northeast of Alice Springs, she was steeped in tribal traditions and surrounded by extensive family, holding the responsibility of applying body paint – whites and reds derived from the earth – a distinct honor in Aboriginal women's ceremonies. Soon she became a successful batik artist, and her hand borrowed the iconography she applied on skin as a body painter– the bush melons, seeds, and more. But it was only in her eighties when Minnie Pwerle put acrylic paint to canvas, again drawing on her life applying ceremonial body paint. Her canvases, seemingly untamed geometrics explosive with color, are methodical topographical mappings of Aboriginal life. We’re informed of some of the iconography —circles and dots representing plenty, bush foods, and ceremonial sites, but the representations are mostly obscured, their meaning sacred and unintended for the uninitiated. Pointed and powerful, Minnie Pwerle quickly soared to national prominence at a time when Australians began to put a premium on Aboriginal art. Since then her work has been in major galleries and museums across Australia, Europe and the United States.