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Sarah Brown has been fighting since 2003 to get dialysis units into remote Indigenous communities.
The CEO of the Purple House — an Aboriginal controlled organisation that looks after dialysis patients — says thousands of Indigenous people rely on renal dialysis to stay alive, but leaving their remote communities for treatment can be a traumatic experience.
"People really become health refugees, away from their country, their sacred sites," Ms Brown said.
In May this year, Northern Territory Minister for Health Natasha Fyles signed an agreement with Western Desert Dialysis (Purple House), allowing it to operate the new dialysis units being built in the remote communities of Docker River, Papunya and Mt Liebig.
But Purple House still needs to come up with the operating costs and its fundraising target is $150,000.
"We're fundraising for running costs, really trying to get all those people from all those communities, who've been so patient, home with their families before Christmas," Ms Brown said.
To help raise the much needed cash, the Alice Springs nurse, who recently won Australian Nurse of the Year is replacing her stethoscope with a paintbrush.
The exhibition, showing at the Araluen Arts Centre in Alice Springs, is simply titled Here.
"I really like to paint a picture, learn what I can from it, and then give it to someone else, so it's like here, here, take this, take it away," Ms Brown said.
The paintings are of iconic places in the Central Australian landscape, like Docker River and Mount Gillen.
"They all start completely red, and then I work up from that, I don't draw meticulously, I just get stuck in," she said.
"I've been having some fun with skies, and in Central Australia everyone always talks about the big skies."
In a first for Araluen Arts Centre, all of Ms Brown's artworks sold out within two hours of the exhibition opening, raising $30,000 for remote dialysis.
The government-owned centre is not waiving its 44 per cent commission.
The money raised will go towards funding remote dialysis services, to help people like 55-year-old Quentin Jurrah.
"I come here very often, for renal, almost every day," Mr Jurrah said.
Mr Jurrah is a Warlpiri man from Yuendumu, about 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs.
When renal dialysis starts in remote communities later this year, Mr Jurrah will be able to stay on country, surrounded by his family.
"When people are away from country they're not able to pass on their cultural heritage to their kids and their grandkids, and people feel an extreme sense of loss," Ms Brown said.
Topics: health, visual-art, healthcare-facilities, nt
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