LYDIA BALBAL

Born: 1958 Punmu (Great Sandy Dessert) W.A
Language: Mangala
Lives and works: Bidyandanga, W.A

Lydia Balbal was born in the remotest parts of the Great Sandy Desert, near Punmu, until 1972, when her family left to settle in Bidyadanga. Lydia began painting in 2007, at the age of 47, and characterises her works through a combination of ancestral traditions and new personal perspectives. Lydia often recomposes traditional landscapes as ‘underground’, depicting the course of subterranean water streams and reaches for the roots of thousand-year-old myths and landscapes, going beyond the visible surface of things.

Lydia Balbal has been collected by both State and National Galleries of Australia and has some of her work form collections in the Netherlands.