Biography

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