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Warami (hello).
My name is Kyralee Shields and I’m a proud Darug and Darkinjung woman. I’m a 30 year old mum to three young children and have a wonderful partner, Nick.
I have always been a very creative person which I’ve expressed through a variety of channels. Over the past few years I’ve felt a growing need to express my connection to culture through my paintings.
Embracing my Indigenous heritage is so important to me because my grandmother lost five children to the Stolen Generations including my mother.
After being removed by the police at age five, my mother spent her childhood deprived of family contact and her connection to culture severed. At 16, she ran away and found her parents again.
Our culture and heritage is a mixture of beautiful, ancient traditions, strong connections to land and our people.
I attempt to capture this in my paintings, but also the hurt and damage that has been done as well. From all of this, I gather my inspiration to create my artworks which are a celebration of my freedom to express my cultural identity; a freedom that was denied my mother, and all my maternal grandmothers going back to presettlement.
My modern contemporary artwork aims to represent and applaud them whilst still honouring traditional form and will inspire pride for our culture in my children and their descendants.