The Aboriginal painter Emily Kam Kngwarray lived and painted close to the earth. She worked with the canvas spread on the ground, sitting cross-legged on an unpainted part and applying colors with certainty and speed. While these paintings might at first seem largely abstract, they pack in highly stylized references to her world—to emus and yam-plant vines and the brilliant desert seasons in her small patch of north-central Australia—Alhalker. Most remarkably, Kngwarray began her practice in her mid–70s. By the time she died eight years later, in 1996, she had produced thousands of canvases. “Emily Kam Kngwarray,” at London’s Tate Modern, is the first large-scale exhibition of the artist’s work in Europe. Created in collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia, it includes more than 80 paintings. —Peter Saenger