Elisabet Kauage 1958 -2025
by Don Wotton
Papua New Guinea lost a national treasure on 5 February 2025 with the passing of renowned artist Elisabet Kauage, following a short illness.
Elisabet Kauage was born in Kambu, Kerowagi District Chimbu Province in 1958 and moved to Port Moresby in 1983 where she commenced painting in 1986. Elisabet was a self-taught artist, having learned by observing her late husband, Mathias Kauage, a pioneer of Papua New Guinea’s contemporary art movement, “draw and paint”.
During the 1990s Elisabet regularly attended the weekend craft markets held in the grounds of Ela Murray International School (at Ela Beach), Port Moresby, where she sold her paintings alongside her late husband and fellow self-taught artists, both the late John Siune and Oscar Towa, while keeping a close eye on her growing children.
Elisabet’s detailed observations of everyday life and interactions between her fellow citizens and PNG’s expatriate community provided rich and endless subject matter for her artworks. Her exuberant paintings, in the naive style, which typically featured political narratives, Bible stories and characters grappling with new technologies, form a wonderful socio-economic record of everyday life in Papua New Guinea. Various exhibitions of her artwork in Australia, England, Germany, Italy and elsewhere overseas during the past 30 years put a spotlight on contemporary art in PNG and inspired many other talented women in PNG to pursue visual arts careers.
In her later years Elisabet could be found selling her paintings outside the Holiday Inn, Hohola or at various other craft markets around the city; dispensing wisdom and leaving a calming influence in her wake. Despite her shy facade an aura of warmth and hospitality defined her personality as the unofficial matriarch of PNG’s contemporary art movement.
Her sons, Chris, Andrew, John, Willey and Michael have also forged careers as artists, but not her three daughters. Elisabet was the only female in her family to take up the brush.
Elisabet’s lasting legacy lies in her artworks which can be found hanging in private homes and prestigious galleries around the world, including Queensland’s State Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art and the National Gallery Australia, Canberra bringing joy, and adding colour and vibrancy, to the lives of everyone privileged to view her paintings.
It was a long and productive life. Vale Elisabet.
