Michael Nelson Tjakamarra

Aboriginal Painting by Michael Nelson Tjakamarra

2014

Maureen Baker lives in Warakurna, an Indigenous community nestled in the Rawlinson Ranges, approximately 330km west of Uluru. Maureen is a creative and...

Carolanne Ken was born in 1971 and resides in Kaltjiti, formerly Fregon, located in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. Carloanne went to school in Kaltjiti as a y...

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...

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...

"White Willow Lilies", is a horizontally oriented oil painting on canvas, with a layer of resin poured and hardened, to create a clear, reflective layer, reminiscent to the surface o...

This abstract landscape painting by Elwood Howell features the artist's signature high horizon line, separating a textured, pale nearly grey foreground and a blue gradient sky. Along...

Dharamsala’ is a small town in the Kangra Vallery in North India. It is the location of the exiled Tibetan Government and home to the Dalai Lama . Colin Taylor...

Acrylic, spray paint, oil bar and oil on linen During these difficult times I have been finding respite and refuge in nature, once again painting outdoors, after many years of worki...