ANCIENTSTORIES NEWPAINTINGS

Mid-career Warlpiri artists and sisters Cecily and Valerie Napanangka Marshall and their cousin Judith Nungurrayi Martin have a close sisterly bond and often paint alongside each other in the studio of their art centre – Warlukurlangu Aboriginal Artists at Yuendumu, NT. Each has developed her own distinctive and evolving style.

Cecily and Valerie paint the Dreaming stories of the large and important creation site of Pikilyi (Vaughan Springs) – a large natural spring near Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), located on Mount Doreen Station in the far western desert of the NT/WA.

As well they, and their sister/cousin Judith are entitled to paint the expansive creation story of the Brush Tail Possum (Janganpa Jukurrpa) – a creation story that traverses thousands of kilometres of Warlpiri country in the Tanami Desert of NT and WA.

Cecily Marshall uses classic geometric western desert iconography to depict the ancient stories of Pikilyi springs and the rainbow serpents that inhabited it.

Judith Martin uses glowing colours and soft, lyrical brushwork to depict the vast country and creation story of the Brush Tail Possum in contemporary style.

A particularly exciting new stylistic development is evident in Valerie Napanangka Marshall’s new works in which she has left a large negative space around the images, thus highlighting them and allowing them to come to the fore.

In so doing, she harks back to the first works on canvas by her Warlipiri and Pintupi predecessors and their paintings at Yuendumu and Papunya in the late 1960s and early 1970s that have since been heralded as the birth of the contemporary desert Aboriginal art movement.

Susan McCulloch August 2023