Elizabeth Durack

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Elizabeth Durack, CMG, OBE (1915–2000) was an Australian artist and writer whose body of work was primarily related to her life in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia where she spent much of her childhood years and her relationships with the indigenous Australian Miriuwong people of the area.

Born in the Perth suburb of Claremont in 1915, she was the younger sister of writer and historian Mary Durack. Like her sister, she was educated at the Loreto Convent in Perth, and later travelled to Europe where she studied at the Chelsea Polytechnic in London during the mid 1930s.

In recognition of her service to art and literature, she was appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1966 and in 1982 was appointed a Companion of St Michael and St George (CMG).

In 1997, she achieved controversy when some artwork which had been entered into Aboriginal art exhibitions under the name Eddie Burrup was exposed as being her own.

She died in 2000, aged 85.

The first major auction of Elizabeth's work was a major success in Perth, WA, May 2006.