Born: c.1984, Kiwirrkurra region, Western Australia
LANGUAGE: Pintupi
Known as: Caroline Nakamarra, Caroline Ward, Caroline Ward Napaltjarri
Dreamings: Marrapinti, Tjukula, Kampurarrpa, Women's Ceremonies
Caroline Ward Nakamarra belongs to one of the founding families of the Western Desert art movement. Her grandfather Timmy Payungka Tjapangati was among the first generation of Papunya Tula painters, men who put the ancient designs of their country onto board in the early 1970s and changed Australian art in doing so. Her mother Lorna Ward Napanangka carried that forward as a leading Pintupi painter of the second generation, exhibiting from 2000 and reaching the finals of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2002.
Caroline came to painting in 2003, taking it up alongside her brother Dinny Ward Tjakamarra. Her sister Maureen Ward Nakamarra paints for Papunya Tula as well. Growing up between Kintore and Kiwirrkurra, she learned the stories the way they have always been learned, sitting beside her mother and the senior women as they worked, listening to the songs that belong to each site and watching how the designs are laid down.
Her country is the far western desert, out past Kiwirrkurra towards the Western Australian border. It is old ground, sandhill and spinifex running to the horizon, with rockholes and soakages set into it that have held water and drawn people to them since the beginning. Caroline paints it the way Pintupi artists have always understood it, seen from above, so the canvas becomes a map of the land itself. She works in close fine dotting, building the surface in layers so that the roundels marking the waterholes sit inside a field of shifting colour, and the whole thing seems to breathe.
DREAMINGS
MARRAPINTI- a rockhole site west of Kiwirrkurra. In the creation time a group of senior women camped here, gathering kampurarrpa and preparing for ceremony, before travelling on east through the country. Marrapinti is one of the most significant women's sites in Pintupi country.
TJUKULA - the rockholes and soakage waters of her country, shown as concentric roundels. These are the places that hold water through the dry, and knowing where each one sits is knowledge handed down through the generations.
KAMPURARRPA - the desert raisin, gathered by the women from the small shrub that grows across this country. The fruit is eaten fresh or ground into a paste and made into a damper.
WOMEN'S CEREMONIES - the singing, dancing and body designs performed by the women at these sites, and the law and knowledge those ceremonies carry.
WALLA WALLA - A rockhole site in Pintupi country, north west of Kintore and out past Kiwirrkurra towards the Western Australian border. Water holds in the rock here long after the sandhills around it have dried off, and the site has drawn people to it since the creation time. The ancestors travelled through this country laying down the law and the ceremonies, and the sites they made along the way are still held and looked after by the families who belong to them.
This painting can be hung vertically or horizontally.
This painting was purchased directly from Caroline, and a gallery certificate of authenticity will be provided with the sale.
