Shirley Purdie's parents are Sandy Thomas and Madigan Thomas and she is the oldest of six children.  As a young woman Purdie worked on Mabel Downs and Texas Downs stations and returned to Warmun to work in the school.

Shirley Purdie is a senior Warmun artist. She is a strong law and culture woman and an important ceremonial singer and dancer.  In the early 1990s Purdie began to paint her country, inspired by older Warmun artists including her mother, Madigan Thomas, as well as Rover Thomas and Queenie McKenzie.

She says: 'It’s good to learn from old people. They keep saying when you paint you can remember that country, just like to take a photo, but there’s the Ngarrangkarni (Dreaming) and everything.  Good to put it in painting, your country, so kids can know and understand.  When the old people die, young people can read the stories from the paintings.  They can learn from the paintings and maybe they want to start painting.’

Purdie is well known for her use of richly textured natural earth pigments on canvas. These ochres are collected from her own country. Purdie is also an adept sculptor. She uses jarlaloo wood and boab nuts to carve sculptures of animals found in Gija country. The carvings are then painted over with ochre colour.

Her pieces are included in important private and public collections such as Artbank, Edith Cowan University Art Collection, Northern Territory University Collection, Kerry Stokes Collection, Harvey Wagner Collection in the USA and Commonwealth Institute Collection in the UK

She has received numerous awards including a Special Commendation at the 25th Telstra NATSIAA, the most important Indigenous art award in Australia and won the 56th Blake Prize for Religious Art.