DANIEL WALBIDI: YURLUPIRTI | New York
Forever Without End (eternal)

Daniel Walbidi is a highly respected Yulparija artist from Bidyadanga, Western Australia, whose innovative techniques and deep cultural knowledge have established him as one of Australia's leading contemporary landscape painters. Starting to paint at sixteen, Walbidi encouraged his elders to document desert stories and Yulparija history through art. Working from his studio in Bidyadanga, he developed a unique style using closely cropped brushes, spray cans, and detailed layering that builds the country from the ground up—each piece taking a lot of time because of complex stippling and multiple layers. Although he was educated at university, Walbidi stays true to traditional law and cultural practices, creating artworks that depict geological changes and ancestral stories of the Great Sandy Desert with remarkable skill. His achievements include winning the prestigious National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (2014) and being acknowledged among Australia's Top 50 Most Collectable Artists (2011). His artworks are part of international collections, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and feature in the documentary Desert Heart. Walbidi's legacy is in blending modern artistic methods with deep-rooted traditional knowledge, showing how Indigenous landscape painting keeps evolving while staying connected to culture and country.