Born: c. 1969, Willowra, Northern Territory
Language: Warlpiri
Skin Name: Naparrula
Dreamings: Bush Tomato, Witchetty Grub, Water (Ngapa), Women's Dreaming
Kay Willis Napurrula is a Warlpiri woman from Willowra, a small community on the Lander River about 300 kilometres north west of Alice Springs. She belongs to the Napurrula skin group, one of the women's subsections in the Warlpiri kinship system, which sets out how people relate to one another and which Dreamings and stretches of Country each person carries responsibility for. The stories Kay paints came to her through her family, and she paints them as her own inheritance.
Kay is self taught and holds real pride in that. Her work is known for its discipline, fine dots laid down in close ranks and worked into circles, grids and long runs until the surface begins to shift and shimmer under the eye. Some of her canvases are almost monochrome, others carry the full desert palette. Either way the method is the same, thousands of individual marks placed by hand across the whole surface.
Her subjects are the bush foods and water sources of her homelands, and she paints them from directly overhead, the way desert artists have always mapped Country. Bush Tomato and Witchetty Grub Dreaming is a large and confident example. What reads as abstract from across a room resolves up close into something closer to a plan of Country, with the sites, the plants and the ground between them all held in the one frame. The colour is bright and modern and the iconography beneath it has been carried for generations.
DREAMINGS
Bush Tomato (Wanakiji) - A small fruit that ripens on a low desert shrub after rain, gathered by women and eaten fresh or dried on a skewer and kept for the lean months. The plant fruits generously in a good season and barely at all in a poor one, so knowing where it grows and when to go is knowledge passed down from mother to daughter.
Witchetty Grub (Ngarlkirdi) - The large pale larva that lives in the roots of the witchetty bush. Women read the ground and the base of the shrub for the signs, then dig the roots out to find them. It is rich food, eaten raw or turned briefly in hot ash, and one of the most important sources of protein in the Central Desert.
Water (Ngapa) - The soakage sites in Kay's homelands near Willowra, where water sits below the sand long after the surface has dried out and women dig down to reach it. In country where rain is rare and the rivers run only now and then, these places are the reason people can live and travel where they do. Ngapa is the subject Kay returns to most often.
Women's Dreaming - The gathering, ceremony and law that belong to women, and the designs that carry them.
This painting can be hung vertically or horizontally.
This painting was purchased directly from Kay and a gallery certificate of authenticity will be provided with the sale.
