Aboriginal artist Wentja Napaltjarri is a highly talented and accomplished artist with a distinctive style. Her work has developed through a succession of stages, her earlier system of interconnecting concentric circles and dotted bands now replaced by mesmerising fields of tonal colours. Her paintings are asymetric, and they usually contain a key motif - in most cases a large roundel, which represents an important rockhole where her family regularly camped over many years.
Surrounding the rockhole is a charged energy field of intricate dots executed in subtle colours and with precision and consistency. The soft dotting technique is a typical characteristic of many Mount Liebig artists. Wentja Napaltjarri sings about the rockhole while she works, and the songs and music are incorporated into her paintings.
A bilingual monographical catalogue on Wentja Napaltjarri's recent paintings has been published by Editions Arts d'Australie • Stéphane Jacob, Paris
Collections:
• Thomas Vroom Collection, Hollande
• Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
• Tandanya National Aboriginal Art and Cultural Institute Inc., Adelaide
• Flinders University Museum, Adelaide
• Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth
• Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
• Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane