In June 1934 she moved to the MacDonald Downs Homestead, located approximately 100 km (62 mi) east of Alhalkere, to work in the house and muster cattle.

[3] As an elder and ancestral custodian of the Anmatyerre people, Kngwarreye had for decades painted for ceremonial purposes in the Utopia region.

[14] In 1977, she began to learn batik under the early guidance of a Pitjantjatjara artist from Ernabella named Yipati and instructors Suzanne Bryce, Jenny Green and Julia Murray.

[19][20] By the time Kngwarreye was introduced to the technique, Aboriginal artists had adapted key parts of the process to suit their own preferences.

The Indonesian technique of applying wax with a pen-like instrument called a canting, for example, had been replaced by brushes, which often produced broader, more animated patterns on the fabric.

Titled A Summer Project, it was eventually acquired by the Holmes à Court Collection in West Perth which then sponsored a program to allow Utopia artists to paint for a period of time unhindered by commercial imperatives.

[2] Rodney Gooch, manager of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), distributed 100 canvases and paints to the Utopia women, where they instructed the artists in the new medium.

I didn't want to continue with the hard work batik required – boiling the fabric over and over, lighting fires, and using up all the soap powder, over and over.

A gallerist of Indigenous art in Sydney once described the period as an energetic push to create: "With no other materials, she dipped her one-inch gesso brush into a pot of paint.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia describes her subject matter as the "essence" of that region, with references to flora, fauna and Dreamtime figures from her environment.

These include: The pencil yam, or anwerlarr, a vine with heart-shaped leaves and seed pods that resemble beans,[14] was an important source of food for the Aboriginal people of the desert.

[36][14] Works by Kngwarreye are rooted in marks painted on sand and the body during Anmatyere experiences within The Dreaming,[37] a moral code based on "ancestral heroes whose pioneering travels gave form, shape, and meaning to the land, seas, and skies in a long-ago creative era.

"[39] Visual elements related to The Dreaming were important parts of the Desert Art Movement at Papunya Tula, where Kngwarreye first began to develop her skills as a painter.

Formed by community elders in 1971 with the support of Geoffey Bardon,[40][41] the school encouraged artists to develop their own ideas when painting on canvas.

One familiar style was to overlap masses of tiny dots to create the optical effect of a heat shimmer, which appears in works by Kngwarreye as well as those of Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula.

[44] In 1992, Kngwarreye began to join her dots to form lines, creating multicoloured parallel horizontal and vertical stripes that suggested rivers and desert terrain.

[citation needed] The Alhalkere Suite (1993) was a huge installation comprising 22 canvases, depicting her Country after flooding and regeneration, in a style similar to Expressionist art.

[49] Her work was included in a 1996 exhibition at Monash University Gallery called Women hold up half the sky: The orientation of art in the post-war Pacific.

[51][52] Their exhibition, titled "Fluent", was a multigenerational show, chosen "to highlight the spectrum of Aboriginal experience and artistic practice in Australia at the time.

"[52] A contemporary review described the show as an "affirmation of the continuing influence of Aboriginal matriarchs in a society that is often defined as a patriarchy ... with interwoven concerns about the nature of the land and their connections to it.

"[53] In 1998, her batiks were on view at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne, in an exhibition titled Raiki Wara: Long Cloth from Aboriginal Australia and the Torres Strait.

[59] From November 2010 to March 2011, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, presented "Remembering Forward: Painting by Australian Aborigines Since 1960".

The show featured works by Kngwarreye and eight other Aboriginal artists, including Paddy Bedford, Queenie McKenzie, and Dorothy Napangardi.

[69] In January 2023, a major retrospective at the NGA, co-curated by Aboriginal curators Kelli Cole and Hetti Perkins, puts its focus on Country, community, and ancestral knowledge in Kngwarreye's artworks.

In consultation with the artists family and elders in the community, 89 works were selected to show the link between Kngwarray's paintings and her Country, Alhalker.

[79][80][81] The rise in market demand in the 1990s for works by Indigenous artists spurred the growth of inexperienced, and, in some cases, fraudulent art dealers.