Born :           1934

Language :    Anmatyerre

Country:        Lyentye (Mosquito Bore)

Medium :       Acrylic on canvas and linen, wood carvings, batik on silk

Subjects :     Awelye (womens ceremoney), bush plum, dreaming, soakage

Lena, wife of the late Left Hand Sam Ngwarai (Kngwarreye), is mother to five children including that of artist Nora Petyarre. She grew up at Utopia Homestead, some 240 km North East of Alice Springs with her siblings Ray Loy, Cowboy Loy and Louie (Louis) Pwerle. Lena has lived in many places in the Utopia Region, including that of Ngkwarlerlanem where she lived with her husband and children for many years.

Initially Lena worked in the medium of batik along with over eighty other women from the Utopia Region in Central Australia. Her work in batik is featured in "Utopia - A Picture Story". In 1996 she was invited to represent Australia in Western Samoa for the Festival of Pacific Arts where she was marked as "among the best available talent".

In this same year she also travelled to Indonesia with other women of Utopia for a workshop funded by the Northern Territory Department of Education so that they could learn more about the art of batik. Lena began painting in the mid 1990's. She has maintained her style throughout her paintings as either a fine circular pattern of dots reflecting her Soakage Dreaming, or her popular bush plum designs where she combines linear and dot work with beautiful colours.