Beautiful Dreamer: Late Halls Creek artist Janet Dreamer’s paradisical work will be exhibited around Australia

Nothing brought Jaru elder Janet Dreamer more joy in her final years than the countless hours she spent at The Halls Creek People’s Church Frail Aged Hostel painting the walkabouts of her childhood. Her vibrant works, brimming with colourful flora and fauna, also brought joy to the hundreds of tourists who snapped them up at nearby Yarliyil Arts in Halls Creek. Now the late Kimberley artist’s energetic creations will get the wider recognition many admirers in the art world believe they deserve with a national exhibition program planned over the next two years. Yarliyil Arts have appointed Victorian gallery Everywhen Art to represent Mrs Dreamer’s estate, organise the exhibitions and sell the around 200 stunning works she made in her prolific final years. Everywhen director and art writer Susan McCulloch said Mrs Dreamer, who died in 2021, was an “exceptional artist”, who should not be forgotten. “We want to give her the recognition that she and her work deserves because it has been very scattered to date with only a couple a exhibitions in Short Street Gallery in Broome,” she said. Part of the reason for Ms Dreamer’s scant exhibitions is because although she was taught to paint by her father when she was 16, she only picked up a brush and began painting in earnest in 2013. Yarliyil Arts centre manager Kevin Kelly was astonished by her work, which he described as “compelling and utterly original — unlike any artist I had even seen”. Her artworks described her childhood walkabouts at Old Flora Valley, near Halls Creek where she grew up in the 1960s. It was a childhood shared with her five siblings, hunting, fishing, travelling with elders and learning traditional ways. Mrs Dreamer later moved to Kirkimbie Station as a kitchen worker and had two children, then to Bililuna Station and eventually to Halls Creek. Her artworks depict flora, wildlife and waterlife on the station, the lush oasis of nearby Palm Springs (Lugangarna) and a lot of the wildlife she observed while walking on her people’s country from Halls Creek to Derby. She had an unconventional artistic approach, first setting down her main subject usually animals, birds, plants or waterlife and then working around them, partially obscuring them in the process with colours and patterns. The results were a densely packed canvas of colour and unique figuration. Sarah Valletine, Yarliyil Art manager from 2023-2024, said Mrs Dreamer was their top seller with the more than 200 of her works sold fetching some of the highest prices. Recognising her prodigious talent, staff began to store Mrs Dreamer’s work for planned gallery exhibitions, however COVID-19 derailed all plans to promote her work widely. Mrs Dreamer died in 2021 in Darwin Hospital and was posthumously named a finalist in Perth’s prestigious John Stringer Prize in 2022. Three of her works were also acquired by the Art Gallery of Western Australia. The exhibition, The Paradisical World of Janet Dreamer, is being held at Everywhen Art, Morning Peninsula until March 3. Another exhibition of her work will be held at Artija Fine Art, South Fremantle, from August 27 to September 7. Ms McCulloch said discussions were under way with galleries for a third exhibition in Sydney next year.