Bessie Sims Nakamarra

Aboriginal Painting by Bessie Sims Nakamarra

2000

As one of the last generation to remember a childhood lived in the desert hunting and gathering with her family, Walangkura Napanangka's paintings recall the stories of country and the location of specific sites in her traditional homeland west of the salt lake of Karrkurutinjinya (Lake Macdonald). Born around 1946, at Tjitururrnga west of Kintore, in the remote and arid country between the Northern Territory and Western Australia, she lived with her father Rantji Tjapangati and mother Inyuwa Nampitjinpa and later, while still a teenager, travelled by foot with her family over the hundreds of kilometres from their remote desert home eventually joining Uta Uta Tjangala's group as they walked in to the settlements of Haasts Bluff and then Papunya. The lure of settlement life with its promise of plentiful food and water belied the harsh conversion they would make to an alien lifestyle with its many problems and unfamiliar demands. The upheaval however, was ameliorated to some degree by the proximity of her immediate family including her mother Inyuwa, adoptive father Tutuma Tjapangati, and sister Pirrmangka Napanangka (now deceased) all of whom became artists. Relocated to the community of Kintore in 1981 when the outstation movement began, Walangkura participated in the historic women's collaborative painting project (1994) that was initiated by the older women as a means of re-affirming their own spiritual and ancestral roots. It was a time of specifically female singing, ceremony and painting, away from the gaze of outsiders and men folk. The huge and colourful canvases that emerged from the women's camp were 'alive with the ritual excitement and narrative intensity of the occasion' (Johnson 2000: 197). Within a year, Papunya Tula Artists, now established at Kintore, had taken on many of these women as full-time artists, revitalising the company after the deaths of many of the original 'painting men'. While individual women forged their own stylistic trajectory, these paintings were immediately distinguishable from the men's more cerebral and symmetrical style. They radiated an exuberant and vibrant energy, the felt heart-beat of women's affinity to country and spirit. Walangkura's early works, created from 1996 onward, are characterized by masses of small markings and motifs covering large areas of canvas. Her favorite colour, a deep sandy orange predominates, accentuated against more somber blacks and reds and dusky greens or yellows. More recent works show a gestural quality though still tightly packed with an intensity of geometric line work representing sandhills. In a sense this provides a strong visual and contextual link to the men's linear style as exemplified by the works of George Tjungurrayi...

Abie Loy is the eldest of five children, and was born on Utopia station, about 270km north east of Alice Springs in the Northern Terrirtory. Abie definitely has painting in her blood: being the daughter of Margaret Loy Pula (who won the Wynne Prize in 2012) and Ray Loy Pula. Her aunt is the celebrated artist, Gloria Petyarre and her Grandmother is the equally respected senior woman artist, Kathleen Petyarre. A very innovative mid-career artist, she began painting at the age of 19. She was mentored by her grandmother Kathleen Petyarre, who taught her the methodology of using details and tiny shimmering dotting to create complex optical effects. Over the years, Abie further developed her skills as an artist to become an extraordinarily talented colourist and designer, experimenting with elements of line, colour and form. Abie is a custodian of the Bush Hen Dreaming which she inherited from her Grandfather. At the simplest level, her Bush Hen Paintings...

An abstract acrylic and watercolor on linen by contemporary artist Edgar Serrano. Signed verso, "Edgar Serrano/Scatalogical Scene/2010."

The artist activates her landscapes with sensuous applications of pigment. She layers bold hues and constructs rhizomatic forms—then interrupted by intuitive streaks of spray paint. ...