Sally Morgan

Sally Morgan was born in 1951 in Perth, Western Australia. Encouraged by her family, she drew voraciously as a child. However, her high school art teachers did not understand her art and criticised her bright, unconventional style. Discouraged, Sally abandoned her art. Years later, at a crucial time of personal discovery, she encountered and was inspired by an uncle – a highly respected artist working on the edge of the desert. Ashamed that she had so easily given up her artistic ambitions in high school, Sally turned to her art again and felt her old passion and confidence return. Drawing on her Noonga heritage she expresses her feelings for the land and its life forms, and her experiences as an Aboriginal woman. Her work is imbued with the spirituality of her culture, its ways of representing the world and its traditional concern with narrative – with telling the story. In the years since 1986, Sally has developed her use of dazzling colour and her personal iconography to achieve a distinctive voice in Australian art. In 1987, Sally achieved enormous success as a writer as well as an artist with the publication of her first book, ‘My Place’, which told the moving story of her discovery of her Aboriginal ancestry. ‘My Place’ went on to become both an Australian and international success, selling over 400,000 copies. Since then, she has written a number of books as well as a successful play, ‘Sister Girl’. Sally’s striking art has achieved international acclaim through her exhibitions in the USA, the UK, India, Japan and Germany. She has been the recipient of a number of major commissions, including one to design a stamp in the United Nation’s Human Rights stamp series for 1993, and has become one of the most recognised of Australia’s many gifted Aboriginal artists. © Adrian Newstead