Melinda Coleman

Melinda Coleman was born in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia in 1985. She lived and grew up in Tjuntjuntjara, where she learned to become an artist from a young age. She currently lives and works in Ceduna, South Australia. Melinda used to work in remote Oak Valley and Tjuntjuntjara as an artist. She predominantly paints, using acrylic paints on canves, but she also makes artefacts from gum nuts and roots. Melinda learned artefact making from her grandfather who took her with him when he dug with a shovel to collect roots for artefact making. These encounters on Country developed her love of painting themes and stories related to bush tucker. She often paints using only three colours, symbolising the different communities who were dislocated from Country, spreading out all over Australia due to the atomic bomb testing at Maralinga. “Now”, she says, ‘People are trying to come together again and I show this with my dot paintings, how the people are spreading out, but they strive to stay together as communities.” Melinda aspires to become a professional artist, creating large canvasses, in addition to wanting to learn different techniques of artefact making.