Barbara Weir was born at Bundy River Station in 1945 in the Utopia region which occupies some 1,800 square kilometres. Her language groups are Alyawarre and Anmatyerre. Her art is as remarkable in its exquisite expression as is the story of her life. Barbara is one of Aboriginal Australia’s stolen generations. The policy was pursued from the early 1900’s to the 1970’s and meant that the children were taken away from their parents to integrate mixed race children from fringe settlements into mainstream Australian life. Barbara’s career as an artist was inspired by the dynamic community of artists at Utopia and the work of her adopted auntie Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Highly experimental in her approach, she tried many mediums and in 1994 went to Indonesia with other artists to explore the art of batik. Initially her painting was largely figurative using traditional symbols such as circles, ‘u’ shapes, wavy lines and dotting to indicate her traditional Dreamtime story. Since then it has evolved to abstraction, a much more expressive and flexible form. Sometimes she incorporates the linear patterns to represent women’s body designs – stripes that are traditionally applied to breasts, arms and legs for ceremonies known as Awelye. Today, Barbara travels widely while producing work for a constant stream of exhibitions for different states of Australia. Always pushing the boundaries, she enjoys nothing more that experimenting with new mediums and new forms of patterning. Artistically she is committed to continually seeking new ways to illustrate her Aboriginal heritage. Barbara’s work is represented in numerous private collections in Australia and overseas. Her work is in the public collections of Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Art Galley of Queensland, Brisbane, the Hitachi, AMP and the Macquarie Bank Collections.