My name is Kelly Taylor and I am an Aboriginal Artist at KT Aboriginal Fine Art, I belong to the Yankunytjatjara people on my grandmother's side and Kokatha people on my grandfather’s side. My grandmother is Millie Taylor, but she was a Lennon before she got married. My grandfather is Edgar Dingaman, my grandfather is also a senior lore man.
I am custodian to my grandmother’s dreamtime stories as well as my own, my painting journey started when she was just 11 yrs. old while living in Alice Springs with my grandmother Millie Taylor (nee Lennon – Dec), every day after school I would watch my grandmother paint for hour’s, then one after school she put out a piece of canvas she designed for me earlier of the lightning dreaming and I have been painting ever since.
My paintings are about my childhood days hunting and gathering traditional foods, playing, and rolling down beautiful red sand hills of Ernabella, Fregon, Ayers Rock, Indulkana, Alice Springs, Amata, Coober Pedy, and Port Augusta, where we would camp surrounded by trees, sand hills and plenty of water holes to swim in and sitting by the campfire or camp site on country, Enjoying the fresh air.
Growing up out bush all us kids would gather firesticks and help nana make the campfire before sunset ready for bedtime, then we would have a feed then jump into the swag and listen to nana tell us stories until we fell asleep, sometimes when it’s a full moon we would fall asleep watching the moonlight just beautiful.
Today I share these special moments with my daughter's and on canvas.
My favourite memory about growing out bush is when I sat with my grandmother in Amata Community (APY) and we would sit and watch the blue rain and just recently I created my first ever large painting of the 'Big Blue Rain' that also represents the lightning Dreaming a story shared to me by my grandmother during these beautiful rainy days and nights.
Every morning we would drive into Indulkana (APY) for the family to get to work and school and I would go with my nana and sit with her to paint at the Iwantja Arts Centre (APY), after a while, I started to go to the arts centre myself and paint when the arts centre closed me and cousins, we would go down to the Indulkana creek and take all our little cousins with us and dig up wild bush onions along the creek beds we used to have so much fun hunting and gathering traditional foods, playing and rolling down beautiful red sandhills.
Sometimes I would paint with my nana out bush for hours, we didn't paint much indoors only when we go to the arts centres.
We moved around a lot from Alice Springs to Ernabella, Fregon then to Indulkana and just out of Indulkana my grandmother showed me the old brick ruins and she showed me exactly where she was born out bush.
I moved around a lot with my nana from Alice Springs to Ernabella, Fregon then to Indulkana, before she settled down on a small property, she named Wantjabella just out of Indulkana this is where my nana was born and one afternoon, she took me for a walk and showed me the old ruin where she was born out bush.