Thea Anamara Perkins is an Arrernte and Kalkadoon artist who creates evocative portraits and landscape paintings exploring being a First Nations person in contemporary Australia. Often drawing from family photographs, Perkins’s work is celebrated for its cinematic yet poignant depictions of family, acts of First Nations resistance, and its strong connection with Perkins’s local Redfern community.
We speak with Perkins in her Carriageworks studio, a site where her grandfather, Uncle Charles (Chicka) Madden, spent over 50 years working on the railroads. Perkins’s mural Stockwoman will grace the walls of Carriageworks for Sydney Festival.
“Communicating through love is also an ultra-powerful way of communicating an idea—THEA ANAMARA PERKINS
