EUBENA
Eubena Nampitjin

Eubena Nampitjin was a distinguished Wangkajunga elder, custodian of women's law, and the most senior woman artist at Balgo (Wirrimanu), whose vibrant paintings depicted her remote Great Sandy Desert homeland with profound cultural authority. Born at Tjinndjaldpa south of Jupiter Well, over 350 kilometres inland from Port Hedland, Nampitjin lived traditionally with minimal non-Indigenous contact until traveling to Old Mission in the late 1940s, moving to Wirrimanu in 1963 while regularly returning to country. Commencing painting in 1986 as women became more broadly included in Wirrimanu's art movement, her work featured in "Art from the Great Sandy Desert" (Art Gallery of Western Australia, 1986). With the formation of Warlayirti Artists in 1989, Nampitjin painted prolifically, often collaboratively with her husband, Wimmitji Tjapangarti, and her daughters. She won the prestigious Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award Open Painting prize in 1998. Her style evolved from strongly defined forms with complex dotted fields (1988-90) to exuberant colour manipulation and fluid compositions, depicting sacred sites, waterholes, and women's dancing tracks with rich, subliminal textures that conveyed her country's profound life and significance.