Bess Napanangka Poulson / Water Dreaming – Puyurru (513-25ny)

Artwork is accompanied by Warlukurlangu Artists (Yuendumu) Art Centre Certificate of Authenticity/Provenance

Bess Napanangka Poulson was born in 1972 in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 290 km north-west of Alice Springs in Northern Territory of Australia. Bess was born into a family of artists. Her mother is Mary Anne Nampijinpa Michaels and her sister is Portia Napanangka Michaels, both well-known Warlukurlangu artists. Bess attended the local school in Yuendumu. After leaving school she worked for the Yuendumu store and the Mining Store in Yuendumu. Later, she moved to Nyirripi to be closer to her family. In Nyirripi, “I was seeing a lot of people painting and it looked more interesting than sitting around home.”

Bess has been painting with the Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu, since 2009. Warlukurlangu Artists provides an outlet for Warlpiri artists to paint their cultural heritage and earn income from their work. This service is extended to Nyirripi artists, on a weekly basis, by delivering canvas and paint to artists and picking up finished artwork in Nyirripi.

Bess paints her mother’s Jukurrpa stories, Dreamings which relate directly to her land, its features and the flora and fauna that inhabit it. These stories have been passed down through the generations for millennia. Bess loves using different colours and uses an unrestricted palette to develop a modern interpretation of her traditional culture.

When she is not painting she likes to go hunting for bush tucker and for goanna.

The site depicted in this painting is Pirlinyarnu (Mt. Farewell), about 165 km west of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory.

Two Jangala men, rainmakers, sang the rain, unleashing a giant storm that collided with another storm from Wapurtali at Mirawarri. A ‘kirrkarlanji’ (brown falcon [Falco berigora]) carried the storm further west from Mirawarri. The two storms travelled across the country from Karlipirnpa, a ceremonial site for the water Dreaming near Kintore that is owned by members of the Napaljarri/Japaljarri and Napanangka/Japanangka subsections. Along the way the storms passed through Juntiparnta, a site that is owned by Jampijinpa men. The storm eventually became too heavy for the falcon. It dropped the water at Pirlinyarnu, where it formed an enormous ‘maluri’ (claypan). A ‘mulju’ (soakage) exists in this place today. Whenever it rains today, hundreds of ‘ngapangarlpa’ (bush ducks) still flock to Pirlinyarnu.

In contemporary Warlpiri paintings, traditional iconography is used to represent the ‘Jukurrpa’ (Dreaming), associated sites, and other elements. In many paintings of this Dreaming, short dashes are often used to represent ‘mangkurdu’ (cumulus & stratocumulus clouds), and longer, flowing lines represent ‘ngawarra’ (flood waters). Small circles are used to depict ‘mulju’ (soakages) and river beds.