Makinti Napanangka, Kintore

Makinti Napanangka (c. 1930–2011), painter, was a leading artist of the Western Desert. A Pintupi language speaker, she was born in the Karrkurritinytja (Lake MacDonald) region on the border of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. She and her family walked in to Haasts Bluff in the early 1940s, before the Papunya Tula Artists' cooperative was established. She began painting at Kintore in the mid-1990s, encouraged by art coordinator Marina Strocchi. By 1996, when canvas was regularly distributed to senior Pintupi women, she was painting in earnest. Her style settled into complex, sometimes rough patterns of pale lines – evoking the Lupul rockhole, women's body paint, spun hair string skirts and groups dancing – on orange or ochre with bursts of pink, blue-mauve and yellow. In 2000 she was represented in the landmark exhibition Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, and in 2008 she won the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. Her work is held by all major Australian art museums.

Hari Ho commented that his almost entirely non-verbal communication with Napanangka helped achieve the 'transparency' that he aims for in a portrait. Ideally, for Ho, the subject is allowed to project their sense of self-awareness and individual living consciousness without the 'imposition of any superfluous "creativity"' on the artist's part.

Purchased with funds provided by the Basil Bressler Bequest 2004
© Hari Ho/Copyright Agency, 2024