Peggy Jones together with Susan Nelson and Flora Holt are all respected, widely exhibited and collected artists working out of Julalikari Arts in Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, 500kms North of Alice Springs.

All coming from the Barkly Region, they typically represent their different language groups, different styles and diverse subject matter. They do however share a general underlying connection to the land and its offerings, a love of bright and boisterous color, and a willingness to freely express themselves.

The Julalikari Arts Centre is located in 'the Pink Palace' at Tennant Creek, which was built by Mary Ward of Banka Banka Station as a hostel for stockmen and their families coming into town from out bush. It has also been used for a range of community purposes and in 1995 it become the Art and Craft Centre for local Aboriginal Women.

Julalikari Arts is a creative home to up to 27 women artists of all ages. Culture plays a very important role in the lives of the artists however, many tend not to paint specific dreaming stories or specific sites. Rather, it is their love of country and cultural activities that inspires the artwork that is produced at the Centre; bush tucker, animals and landscape, and more recently, social issues.

Peggy Jones is perhaps the Centre's most enduring artist and has achieved much success from her art on a national and international scale. Her iconic expressive use of colour and bold and energetic brushstrokes give her wildly abstract bush birds and animals their own unique personalities and these, together with her bush tuckers refer to her strong connections to her country.

Abstracted, brightly coloured and animated bush animals and birds and bush tuckers are also inherent in the paintings of Flora Holt. She also incorporates in her paintings images of people, non-native animals that she sees on television and in her travels, landscapes and depictions of activities happening in her country such as trains passing through and tourists visiting.

Susan Nelson paintings exude various distinct styles: she makes 'culture paintings' relating to the Ancestral Realm, depicts minimalist bold versions of her favourite bush tuckers and lately she has begun working in a minimalist narrative style to depict bible stories.

Together, these three senior ladies represent a great spread of traditional country in the Barkly Region and beyond.