Judy Prosser was born in 1952 in Western Australia. Her artistic career began at the very early age of 6 when she spent afternoons after school drawing pictures in chalk on the school’s blackboard where her father was a schoolteacher. Encouraged by him to draw, she filled sketchbooks throughout her childhood and teens, with drawings mostly of animals, especially horses, her passion.
After studying art for three years and attaining a Diploma in Fine Art at the Claremont School of Art in Perth, Western Australia, in 1978, she headed north to the Kimberley, W.A., and on to Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. In the north of Australia, she discovered all the subjects of her dreams; wetlands, rivers and billabongs full of crocodiles, waterbirds and wildlife, and a vast and changing wild landscape.
Her travels across this country have led to periods of painting in Broome and Kununurra (W.A.); Darwin and Kakadu (N.T.); Cairns and Cape York, Mission Beach and Maleny (Qld). She has produced paintings with subjects ranging from rainforest birds – riflebirds, cassowaries, catbirds – to wetlands and desert creatures – crocodiles, brolgas, magpie geese.
Judy Prosser’s Art
Her great respect for the aboriginal people, and their spiritual connection to the land, has given Judy a direction that has evolved into a distinctive approach to painting them. Judy Prosser’s watercolours often depict figures dancing freely in the Australian landscape, along with brolgas, dingos and other animals. With the spectacular colours of the Kimberley to inspire her, Judy loves to paint the mangroves and tidal creeks, the red dirt of the desert, and the turquoise seas which kiss the white sands of the Kimberley coastline.
She prefers to work in Watercolour and Gouache but also paints in acrylic on canvas.
Judy spends several months of the year “out bush” with her husband, Tom, trekking with him and his camel team along the Fitzroy River and into the Great Sandy Desert, and camels have become a new passion for her with many camel paintings resulting from their safaris. A lifetime passion of hers is horses; she has several on her outback station.
Judy has had many Exhibitions, and her work is represented overseas and in Collections. Over the years, she won several Awards and Prizes, and her paintings are exhibited in several Australian galleries.
Judy works from her home, Udialla, an outback station in the heart of the Kimberley.