Jan Billycan (Djan Nanundie)

Biography of Aboriginal Artist, Jan Billycan (Djan Nanundie)

Jan Billycan, born in the early 1930s in the remote Ilyarra country of the Great Sandy Desert, Northern Western Australia, holds a profound connection to her ancestral homeland. Her life in this vast and challenging environment, rich with jila (living waters), shapes the unique rhythm and colour of her artistic expression. Her work embodies a deep respect for the sacred waters that define the landscape, places like Karrparti, Kawarr, and Jurntiwa, where she roamed with her family as a child. For Billycan, these waterholes are not mere geographical features but sites of spiritual power, home to the quiet snake that can bring rain and whose movements are carefully controlled through song and ceremony.

The significance of water to Billycan’s art reflects not only its physical importance in a harsh, desert environment but also its deeper cultural resonance. Water is both life and history, a symbol of survival in a landscape that is often unforgiving. In Bidyadanga, where Billycan has lived since relocating from the desert, these stories of water and survival are passed down through art. Her works, often described as vibrant and pulsating with life, offer a window into this world, where colour and form convey the profound connection between land, body, and spirit. The harmony and balance found in her use of colour mirror the delicate equilibrium required to live in such an environment, where water brings both sustenance and the threat of disruption.

Billycan’s ability to capture the essence of Ilyarra and the spirit of the jila reflects a lifetime of intimate knowledge of her country. As a traditional healer, her art possesses a unique vision, an almost x-ray ability to reveal the hidden life within the landscape. Her brushstrokes convey more than aesthetic beauty; they are imbued with the memories and lived experiences of a people whose connection to the land is both physical and spiritual. This bond between the land and its people is further deepened by the displacement many Bidyadanga residents experienced, leaving their desert homelands when their waterholes were disrupted by outside forces. Yet in her work, Billycan reclaims that landscape, fixing its stories and memories onto canvas for future generations.

Her paintings are maps of memory and migration, visual testimonies to the resilience of her people and the enduring power of their stories. Collectors may see in her work the echoes of Western abstraction, but to Billycan, these images are real and alive, part of a living tradition that spans generations. Her art stands as a testament to survival and continuity, a visual expression of the deep connection between her people, their stories, and the land that sustains them. Through her vivid, powerful imagery, Billycan invites us to see the world as she does—alive with history, memory, and the constant, quiet pulse of the jila.