My Country Stays in My Dreams continues the national exhibition programme of work by the late Jaru artist, Janet Dreamer.

The East Kimberley Jaru painter Janet Dreamer (1959-2021) was a unique image maker whose paintings will be on show in Artitja Fine Art Gallery’s upcoming exhibition in South Fremantle.

Known affectionately as “Dreamer”, Janet Dreamer grew up in the 1960s at her birthplace of Old Flora Valley in the east Kimberley near Halls Creek. She and her five siblings hunted, fished and travelled with their elders, learning the traditional ways. Later, she moved to Kirkimbie Station as a kitchen worker and had two children, then to Billiluna Station and eventually to Halls Creek.

Although Dreamer started painting at the age of 16 under her father’s tutelage, it was several decades later – after she joined Yarliyil Arts in Halls Creek in 2013 – that she started painting in earnest and with her own vision. And what a vision it was.

Her vibrantly coloured canvases with their free imagery and sizzling hues bring to life an extraordinary range of flora, wildlife and water life of Old Flora Valley Station, the lush oasis of nearby Palm Springs (Lugangarna) and the abundance of both plants and wildlife she observed on the many journeys she called ‘walkabout’ over vast tracks of her people’s country from Derby to Halls Creek.

“My country”, she said, “stays in my dreams. I dream about my home, and I don’t forget about my country.”